Tom Mulligan
New Member
Hello,
I live directly on a lakeshore at a small cabin which has had no water issues using a sand point well for 30 years. I began experiencing issues with the check valves getting clogged with sand causing the pump to short cycle.
I decided to replace the sand point well with a new one so I dug a hole and made a new sand point about 10 ft from the old one. I used a pump and got adequate water and it functioned now for over a year.
Oddly there is some sand that comes up but it does not cause any valve pressure failures.
I am now experiencing a problem where its taking the pump forever to get to pressure. Some times it just happens no problem and gets pressure fast and be fine, other times the pump cannot reach pressure at all and just keeps running. For some reason however, tapping on the valves allows it to get pressure, despite the fact that the check valves are not leaking.
This pump is connected to a water softener which I had unplugged for some time because it was putting too much pressure on the pump. It seemed mostly empty. I turned it on and ran it through its regen cycle to see if it would help, maybe there was air in the softener causing some issue with the pump reaching pressure. At first it seemed to help.
Running the shower and a faucet generally cuases no problem , good pressure for water. When I try to run the washer, (a higher demand?) the pump will lose its ability to reach pressure and start struggling for water. This could be in conjunction with some odd noises coming from the water softener
The sand point is very close to a lake, but the water level of this lake did drop a bit this year but mostly the thing punches out a couple gallons per minute and kind of suddenly had these issues.
My question to the forum is if an improperly functioning water softener could effect the ability of the pump to reach pressure with maybe bad valves or something else being wrong? I may bypass it just to check but not sure if anyone has any experience. Ive made sure everything is all tight and I replaced my pump with a brand new one and same issue.
Any assistance would be appreciated as I keep having pump failures. The combination of tapping fixing it and the water softener is driving me nuts as to what the culprit is here. Ill be replacing the check valves in the mean time but ive already done that a few times and they are almost new good brand valves.
EDIT:
As my pump tries to pressureize the tank, it starts to struggle. If I tap and hit the check valves it seems to help. Can check valves fail going "forward" and still function just fine holding water? My thought is that the check valves are possibly "failing forward" because i have tapped on them so much from being clogged with sand in the past. Maybe all the htiting and tapping has caused the mechanism inside to not open to let water in but still function as a check valve for backward water.
I live directly on a lakeshore at a small cabin which has had no water issues using a sand point well for 30 years. I began experiencing issues with the check valves getting clogged with sand causing the pump to short cycle.
I decided to replace the sand point well with a new one so I dug a hole and made a new sand point about 10 ft from the old one. I used a pump and got adequate water and it functioned now for over a year.
Oddly there is some sand that comes up but it does not cause any valve pressure failures.
I am now experiencing a problem where its taking the pump forever to get to pressure. Some times it just happens no problem and gets pressure fast and be fine, other times the pump cannot reach pressure at all and just keeps running. For some reason however, tapping on the valves allows it to get pressure, despite the fact that the check valves are not leaking.
This pump is connected to a water softener which I had unplugged for some time because it was putting too much pressure on the pump. It seemed mostly empty. I turned it on and ran it through its regen cycle to see if it would help, maybe there was air in the softener causing some issue with the pump reaching pressure. At first it seemed to help.
Running the shower and a faucet generally cuases no problem , good pressure for water. When I try to run the washer, (a higher demand?) the pump will lose its ability to reach pressure and start struggling for water. This could be in conjunction with some odd noises coming from the water softener
The sand point is very close to a lake, but the water level of this lake did drop a bit this year but mostly the thing punches out a couple gallons per minute and kind of suddenly had these issues.
My question to the forum is if an improperly functioning water softener could effect the ability of the pump to reach pressure with maybe bad valves or something else being wrong? I may bypass it just to check but not sure if anyone has any experience. Ive made sure everything is all tight and I replaced my pump with a brand new one and same issue.
Any assistance would be appreciated as I keep having pump failures. The combination of tapping fixing it and the water softener is driving me nuts as to what the culprit is here. Ill be replacing the check valves in the mean time but ive already done that a few times and they are almost new good brand valves.
EDIT:
As my pump tries to pressureize the tank, it starts to struggle. If I tap and hit the check valves it seems to help. Can check valves fail going "forward" and still function just fine holding water? My thought is that the check valves are possibly "failing forward" because i have tapped on them so much from being clogged with sand in the past. Maybe all the htiting and tapping has caused the mechanism inside to not open to let water in but still function as a check valve for backward water.
Last edited:
