Shallow Well

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Rusty88

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Is there anyone who can help me design a shallow well pump and pressure tank? I have an old shallow well and I've been using a small Tractor Supply pressure tank and well pump and it is not lasting and not enough pressure. Do larger pressure tanks give better pressure than smaller pressure tanks when using the same size motor? I want to replace everything including the piping going into the well. Any advice would be appreciated as I know nothing about wells. Thank you.
 
The size of the pressure tank has nothing to do with better pressure, only the pump. How far down is it to the water, and how much does it drop when the pump is running? if the casing is 4 inch or larger a submersible pump is much more efficient, and will develop more pressure. If the water table drops much below 22 feet a shallow well pump becomes very inefficient.
 
The size of the pressure tank has nothing to do with better pressure, only the pump. How far down is it to the water, and how much does it drop when the pump is running? if the casing is 4 inch or larger a submersible pump is much more efficient, and will develop more pressure. If the water table drops much below 22 feet a shallow well pump becomes very inefficient.
 
My well is 14 ft. deep. I was thinking about using a 1 horse jet pump but I don't know how to determine what size pressure tank to use.
 
If the well is only 14 ft deep a shallow well pump will work fine, but does the water level drop very much when the pump runs? 20 gallon pressure tanks are probably the most common, a smaller one just makes the pump start and stop more often, which is bad for the pump. A 1 hp pump is larger than necessary for a normal household, but if you plan on using a lot of water for irrigating or something else then it's OK. The pump should be designed to match the demand, a larger pump doesn't give you more pressure unless the demand is more than the output of a smaller pump.
 
My well is 14 ft. deep. I was thinking about using a 1 horse jet pump but I don't know how to determine what size pressure tank to use.

The purpose of the pressure tank is to keep the pump from “short cycling”, or starting and stopping too often. Which wears them out, and is inefficient. Every time a pump starts there is an initial inrush current draw until the motor gets up to speed, and there is also a slight hydraulic lag, as the water in the pump and piping gets moving.

The tank is sized by the pump output, so the pump runs for at least a minute when it comes on. I have a couple of sites which are off grid, and the tanks are sized to allow the pumps to run for about half an hour, and hold enough water so the back up generators aren’t firing off in the middle of the night and waking everyone up.

The Well Trol site has this chart. https://www.rcworst.com/Shared/content/mfr/amtrol_well_x_trol/docs/wellxtrolsizing.pdf
 
Tanks use to be sized to allow the pump to run for at least one minute. And that one minute is bare minimum. Two minutes of run time is better and no cycling is best. Since 1993 the Cycle Stop Valve (CSV) has been eliminating cycles, making pumps last longer and using much smaller pressure tanks. As was said, the only purpose of a pressure tank is to limit the number of on/off cycles, and when you have a CSV to do that for you, a large pressure tank is not needed.

Even a 20 gallon pressure tank only holds 5 gallons of water and is not large enough when not using a CSV.

If you want something to last get a Goulds J7S or J10S pump and use a PK1A kit from Cycle Stop Valves to control the pump and deliver strong constant pressure to the house. With a CSV the 4.5 gallon tank that only holds one gallon of water is all you need.

See this link.
https://cyclestopvalves.com/pages/reviews

J7S and PK1A.jpg
 
Does the Cycle Stop Valve basically act like a dimmer or rheostat, so it slows the pump down so that it never cycles off during water use, and just pumps as much real time pressure and flow as needed?
 
Does the Cycle Stop Valve basically act like a dimmer or rheostat, so it slows the pump down so that it never cycles off during water use, and just pumps as much real time pressure and flow as needed?
Not quite.
I believe it's a constant speed motor, producing more pressure than may be required for a particular flow, and uses a pressure regulating valve to regulate the pressure. It does cycle off at some point but no where as frequently as the typical pressure demands. The pressure regulating valve takes on the job of providing the required pressure, allowing the pump to run at a higher pressure where it typically requires less HP. I don't remember all the details.
More efficient that as variable frequency drives, for the typical size application. Or something like that. Just going by my failing memory.
 
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Diehard is doing pretty good. The CSV is just a simple valve. It works like a pressure reducing valve as long as you are using more than 1 GPM. The spring in the CSV pushes the valve open when there is less than the normal 50 PSI setting. When less flow is needed and the pressure increases above 50 PSI, the water pressure actually closes the CSV to make the pump produce less water. There is no electric to the CSV, it is pressure operated. When no water is being used the CSV closes down to 1 GPM. There is a bypass in the CSV that can never close to less than 1 GPM, which is still several times more flow than needed to keep the pump/motor cool. When no water is being used, the CSV closes to 1 GPM, the 1 GPM has no place to go except the pressure tank, which is filled to 60 PSI and the standard 40/60 pressure switch shuts the pump off.

As long as more than 1 GPM is being used the pump never shuts off. When no water is being used the CSV fills the pressure tank at 1 GPM rate, which allows for a much smaller tank than if it were filling at the max pump flow rate. The part that is hard to understand is that when the flow from a pump is restricted with a valve, the amps drop the same way as if the motor was being slowed down with one of those computerized, expensive, and problematic variable speed pump controllers or VFD.

The CSV takes advantage of the natural drop in amps when a full speed pump is restricted with a valve, while a VFD is slowing the RPM and tying to trick a pump into doing something it already does naturally.

 
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I just wanted to thank everyone for all the info! I am only using it for landscape irrigation in my yard.Running three or four sprinklers heads at a time and a drip irrigation in the gardens.The drip irrigation will run at different time. I am interested in the CSV valve and pressure tank that is sold as one united. Is this a good route to take go? Also I have a credit for tractor supply and was thinking of using it to by a motor from them. Thoughts?
 
Google the J7S. I don't think it will be much more than the County Line brand TS sells. But either one will work with one of the PK1A kits and should last a long time.
 

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