Our house is supplied water from a well pump, placed about 450' below ground. In 2016 the pump begin to have a variety of issues which resulted in lower than desirable water pressure. Since we have a 5,000 gallon above water tank (required by local fire code), I decided the best solution was to reconfigure our existing system to provide better water pressure to the house while limiting the use of the aging below ground pump.
The original system pumped water to the house directly from the below ground pump, and provided water to the 5,000 gallon tank only to kepp ot topped off.
The reconfigured system can best be described as two systems that work together:
1. Below ground pump fills the above ground tank as needed.
This system uses the existing below ground pump, which fills the above ground tank until such time the float switch in the tank determines the tank is full and switches off the below ground pump. When the water in the tank gets to the specified low point, the float switch actuates and switches on the below ground pump. This repeats as necessary to keep the tank between the specified high and low water marks.
2. Above ground system provides water to the house.
This system uses an above ground booster pump which draws water from the above ground tank and sends it to the house. The booster pump uses a pressure switch to determine when it should be on or off (it measures the pressure at the outlet of the adjacent pressure tank, nominally a range of 40 to 60 PSI.
OLD CONFIGURATION
NEW CONFIGURATION
NOTES:
a. The booster pumps I chose (after much research), is a Gould "J7S" 3/4 HP 220VAC model # C48AA33A06, Part No. J05853L.
b. I installed an additional switch to manually turn on the below ground pump as needed (mostly for testing without having to mess with the float switch deep in the tank).
c. 220 volts can kill you. Do not attempt to do this work unless you are qualified to do so.
