FliesLikeABrick
Member
Figured I would share the pressure tank upgrade we implemented, curious about observations/feedback or anyone's similar experiences
We bought our house about 5 years ago, and don't use a ton of water but I couldn't help but notice the fairly short cycle times on the well during our higher-draw activities, and during the summers as our garden footprint has been growing. The existing tank is 20 gallons with a ~6 gallon operating volume. I opportunistically started brainstorming a pressure tank upgrade, knew it was worth going for basically the largest tank available, but didn't have a strong driver to spend that money.
Then there was an industrial auction nearby that had an old drill press I was bidding on... they also had a lot of 2x 120 gallon pressure tanks, stated as new/unused (around 5 years old) with the factory plugs still installed, one of which was still in the factory box. Seemed like a good opportunity for our upgrade, I threw the opening bid of $25 on and knew it was worth bidding up to at least $200, these tanks each are something like $800 if you bought them new today
Well I guess nobody at this industrial auction was here with these in mind because I brought the pair home for $25+fees
I ended up selling the nicer one (the one in box had zero cosmetic wear/tear whereas the other one had been bumped around in the warehouse) on Craigslist, and now it's time to make room for the upgrade in the basement
Moved the dehumidifier elsewhere, and needed to move the water softener closer to the water heater, this would let the new tank go next to the old one and tee in more easily.
Extended the water softener drain lines to the sump pit, and needed to deal with the inlet/outlet
I'm not thrilled about this, but at the time was thrown off about the hoses that the water softener has been installed with. If I recall, they were NPT but had sealing washers in them - I could not find longer equivalents for sale locally, so instead used PEX with female NPT adapters (and sharkbite to copper on the other end). I am not crazy about this outcome, and whenever the day comes to replace our water softener I will solve this differently.
To tie the new tank in, I replaced an 3/4 elbow near the existing tank with a tee
and adapted the new tank down from 1-1/4 NPT to 3/4 for a stub of tubing to come out from underneath
Continuing the post into the first reply due to attachment limit
We bought our house about 5 years ago, and don't use a ton of water but I couldn't help but notice the fairly short cycle times on the well during our higher-draw activities, and during the summers as our garden footprint has been growing. The existing tank is 20 gallons with a ~6 gallon operating volume. I opportunistically started brainstorming a pressure tank upgrade, knew it was worth going for basically the largest tank available, but didn't have a strong driver to spend that money.
Then there was an industrial auction nearby that had an old drill press I was bidding on... they also had a lot of 2x 120 gallon pressure tanks, stated as new/unused (around 5 years old) with the factory plugs still installed, one of which was still in the factory box. Seemed like a good opportunity for our upgrade, I threw the opening bid of $25 on and knew it was worth bidding up to at least $200, these tanks each are something like $800 if you bought them new today
Well I guess nobody at this industrial auction was here with these in mind because I brought the pair home for $25+fees
I ended up selling the nicer one (the one in box had zero cosmetic wear/tear whereas the other one had been bumped around in the warehouse) on Craigslist, and now it's time to make room for the upgrade in the basement
Moved the dehumidifier elsewhere, and needed to move the water softener closer to the water heater, this would let the new tank go next to the old one and tee in more easily.
Extended the water softener drain lines to the sump pit, and needed to deal with the inlet/outlet
I'm not thrilled about this, but at the time was thrown off about the hoses that the water softener has been installed with. If I recall, they were NPT but had sealing washers in them - I could not find longer equivalents for sale locally, so instead used PEX with female NPT adapters (and sharkbite to copper on the other end). I am not crazy about this outcome, and whenever the day comes to replace our water softener I will solve this differently.
To tie the new tank in, I replaced an 3/4 elbow near the existing tank with a tee
and adapted the new tank down from 1-1/4 NPT to 3/4 for a stub of tubing to come out from underneath
Continuing the post into the first reply due to attachment limit
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