BasilB I have a situation where I need a holding tank sort of too so I am anxious to see the replies to your post. We have sold our current home where I have a pond with about 12 goldfish that are between 4 to 7 inches long. I have had all these fish for about 7 years now and feel very responsible for them. I am concerned for their well being as The new owners have indicated they "don't know what they will do with the pond...how hard is it to fill in...etc" So at this point I must get the fish moved with me somehow. problem is I am having to completely move myself and daughters (close move-only about 10 miles down the road)as my husband is deployed. I am not able time wise(or skill wise..haha) to build a new pond right now at my new home. Any ideas out there for a container/way, etc to keep my fish safe,alive for about a month until my husband is home for a few weeks? I have about 3 weeks to make a plan but I am stumped because of the number of fish and their size. Thanks all momof3

If you want to adjust the cut-in/cut-out pressure on your pump now just turn the nut on the tall spring counterclockwise several turns, then run water to make the pump cycle. If your gauge is right it should give you your pressure. Then if you want it lower,repeat the above till you get it to the 40/60 or close in that range. You will not have to adjust the air in this type tank whenyou change pressure. That is only with a bladder type tank. If your well tech was telling you your pressure is 52/72 was he just checking by what your gauge reads? It is very possible that it could be off. My brothers reads 80psi but he has only 60 cut-out. He just doesn't bother to change the gauge. You could get a gauge you screw onto the outside faucet and see how much pressure you have at your house/spigots. You should get the tank and replace it yourself. They are really easy to install. About the cost, the $1100 was expensive, but then the Amtrol/Well-X-Trol products are considered premium and they do cost more than the Flo-Tec stuff at HD. They are supposed to use better materials inside and out BUT my brother has a Sta-Rite bladder tank that is almost 30 years old and it still works fine and the bladder is fine--no waterlogging, and believe me he is one of these that doesn't do any servicing to his stuff till he has to. When you have a bladder tank you still have to drain them and check the air charge in them every year(or at least you should). That is the life of the tank--although not in my brothers case(LOL). If you are satisfied with your system and it works fine I would leave it. You can even do the maintenance on it every year. It is just adding air, although I have seen these that would waterlog fairly often. Evidently you haven't had this problem if you can make it a year without adding air. Is your tank hooked up to the pump where it adds air to the tank every time it comes on? I would think so, if you use it for a year with no problems with rapid cycling. Hope some of this helps.

It sounds like you have a system similar in concept to what I am doing in Orlando. Chlorine injection, contact tank, carbon filter to take out chlorine and anything that coagulated from the chlorine, then a water softener. Periodic draining of the contact tank is required to get rid of what settles to the bottom of the tank. First 6 months we had great water. Now it is yellow. I havenÂt noticed a smell yet. I also found brown sediment in my chlorine mixture tank, but I determined that came from putting untreated water into the tank. Of course all the iron, etc precipitated and settled to the bottom. Now I make sure to only put treated water in with the chlorine. Is it possible you also put some untreated water in with the chlorine? What I am working on now is the yellow water. The installer said to backwash the carbon filter more often and drain the contact tank more often. I was to the point of daily backwashes and weekly tank drains and it only made matters worse. After lots of research and little help from the installer, I figured out that the installer set the system up with way too much chlorine injection. The chlorine was getting past the carbon filter because it was just too much for the charcoal. I started testing the chlorine level coming out of the contact tank. At first it was so high that the OTO coagulated and floated to the top of the test kit. I have it down to probably 5ppm, and still tweaking to my target of 2ppm. From what I can tell my softener is shot. The carbon may also be nearly exhausted from all the chlorine. My well water is not all that bad, as wells in Florida go. Hardness 205ppm (12gpg), Iron 2ppm, and sulfur smell. I don't know if this is any help, but maybe you also have something out of adjustment?

Although they are very seldomly used today, piston pumps are positive displacement pumps. Water enters a cylander and a moving piston pushes the water out in a positive displacement. These type of pumps have two serious drawbacks for residential applications. 1. They are low volume pumps, which means to increase volume we must use larger pumps. 2.If a positive diplacement pump pushes against a closed system, the water will not compress therefore the force must be relieved in some manner or it will damage the pump, piping system or the storage tank therefore it is absolutely essential that we have an air/water type pressure tank to aborb the energy and control the pump operation. A centrifigal pump is a Non-displacement type pump. The centrifigal pump works by rotating an impellor at high speed. The water in the impellar is then thrown outwards against the pump body at high velocity which attempt to compress the water against the impellar housing. Understanding that water will not compress, this action then increases the pressure of the water which is relieved by pushing the water up the discharge pipe. The also causes a reduction in pressure at the impellar center intake opening which sucks additional water into the impellar. (techically speaking there is no such thing as suction. The water is actually forced into the pump by standard atmospheric pressure pushing down on the surface of the standing water in the well. The actual intake pressure is determined by how deep the pump intake is below the standing water level.) Centrigal pumps are rated by TDH (total dynamic head). Simple centrifigal pumps such as a sump pump have one impellar and while they have a high volume they typically have a very low TDH. By example, a common 1/3hp sump pump might have a TDH equal to 30gpm @ 12' lift. A one square inch vertical column of water physically weighs .434lbs per foot of vertical rise therefore a pump that produces a 12' lift has an output pressure at the pump discharge port of 12'x .434lbs = 5.2psi. When computing the TDH of the piping system we must then compute the physical weight of the standing head of water in the riser pipe + the friction head of the water as if flows through the pipe and fittings. The total TDH of the piping system is then subtracted from the Dynamic pressure of the pump to determine the resultant flow at the pipe discharge point. As you can see a centrigal pump is a very high volume pump but it is a low pressure pump. When centrifigal pumps are used as deepwell pumps they stack multiple impellors so that the output of one impellar is the input to the next one. If you could see a deepwell centrigal pump in a cutaway view the impellar section would look very similar to the compressor stage of a jet engine. The distinct advantage of these non-displacement pumps is that the impellars can rotate even though there is no flow of water through the pump without undue damage to the pump. In theory of course. In actual practice, if a centrigal pump rotates with an empty chamber small droplets of water are propelled at high speed and they hit the impellar blades or pump body like a shot blaster and can cause pitting, chipping or other severe internal damage. In your case the deepwell pump is the "prime mover" for your entire water supply system. This means that the pump must not only lift the water from the well to the structure, but it must also produce the code required 35psi static head pressure to insure proper flow through all your fixtures. In order to do so the pump must be pushing into a closed system. If you were to discharge the water from the deep well pump into a reservoir that is open to atmosphere you would then need an auxillary pump to produce the required static head pressure for your plumbing system.