Will a CSV work for me?

[Tom Frederick]

I am in SE Michigan. I have a well guy I trust and I need to replace my pressure tank (failed bladder) and I want to remove the canister "whole house rust filter" (a pain to swap out cartridges each month) and replace with a Iron Filter that self backwashes. As I am making changes, I investigated a VFD. Sounded good, but reading Valveman's posts I am leaning toward a CSV. I asked my well guy and he said "for homes with iron they are a pain in the but and often gum up or fail..." I suggested we put it after the rust filter. He said that was not possible as they have to be in before the pressure tank. I'm no expert. Can a CSV be put in between a rust filter and a water softener, AFTER the pressure tank? Any other insights on houses with iron and CSVs? I have 2.5 ppm iron in my water.

 

[LLigetfa]

Can a CSV be put in between a rust filter and a water softener, AFTER the pressure tank?

No. It needs to be before the pressure tank. Whether or not the iron would gum things up depends on what state it is (ferrous versus ferric) when it passes through the CSV. Either way, the CSV is cleverly designed to self-clean the 1 GPM port on it so it would never fully clog to where a pump could deadhead.

What may present more of a challenge is the aeration method prior to filtration. There are several methods, of which the amount and state (ferrous versus ferric) determine which is best.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Valveman]

Yeah you don't want to use one of the "in well" type valves (CSV125) with iron. But like LL says other CSV's like the CSV1A has self cleaning ports and won't clog up with iron anymore than the check valve or the pump impellers. But unlike the check valve or the impellers the CSV1A has a removable gut pack that can be easily cleaned. Some people with really bad iron will keep and extra gut pack cleaned and ready. Just makes it quick and easy to clean the CSV, as you can let the dirty cartridge soak if needed. Even if the iron is so bad it clogs the pump impellers every couple of years the CSV1A will last a long time.

 

[LLigetfa]

Again, it depends on the type of iron. I have what some folks call "clear iron" meaning that the water drawn straight from the well looks clear and only after it has been exposed to air for a while does it look nasty. Inside my pump and pipes it is fine and only after the aerator (micronizer) does it become a nasty mess. I do however also have manganese and that stuff is really nasty all over.

 

[Tom Frederick]

I have soluble iron. Only 2.5 gpm, so it is not really bad. With a simple yarn wound whole house cartridge filter and Kenmore softener I have no iron stains. I am guessing that my iron is not that bad. Any thoughts? So are we saying that the CSV has to go after the bladder and before the iron filter? If i am understanding correctly, some CSVs have an easy to access clean out/gut replace system?

 

[Tom Frederick]

I plan to replace my 80 gal pressure tank with another the same size. Is that a waste with a CSV? I have a SimplePump that can pump back into my bladder tank up to 45 psi so I want a bit tank in case of long term power failure. I also have 7 kids and two adults in the house.

 

[LLigetfa]

So are we saying that the CSV has to go after the bladder and before the iron filter?

No, it has to go before the bladder tank.

 

[Valveman]

I plan to replace my 80 gal pressure tank with another the same size. Is that a waste with a CSV? I have a SimplePump that can pump back into my bladder tank up to 45 psi so I want a bit tank in case of long term power failure. I also have 7 kids and two adults in the house.

With a hand pump like the Simplepump the 80 gallon tank is the way to go. Even though you need to understand that an 80 gallon tank only holds about 20 gallons of water. Being as you are in Michigan, you probably don't have much if any outside watering. So with an 80 gallon size pressure tank the CSV is only going to help (and give you constant pressure) when you use more than 20 gallons at any one time. And since you probably only have a 10 GPM pump, the 80 gallon tank will give you 2 minutes of run time, and the pump won't cycle itself to death for many years.

 

[Tom Frederick]

Thanks, Valveman. Just so I make sure I got it right, you are saying an 80 gal tank without a CSV is the way to go, correct?

 

[Tom Frederick]

Why does an 80 gal tank hold so little? I figured it would hold at least 1/2 capacity of water.

 

[Reach4]

Why does an 80 gal tank hold so little? I figured it would hold at least 1/2 capacity of water.

What kind of answer are you looking for? If you are wanting to figure out a mathmatical/physics explanation, look up Boyles Law, and play with the numbers. I suggest a spreadsheet.

If you want an easier explanation, search out the term "drawdown". Then understand that with a 40/60 system for example, the actual air precharge is 38 or even lower sometimes. What the implications are that the specified drawdown serves water from a wider range than just 20 psi. It also turns out that the 1/4 factor is a bit rounded off.

 

[Tom Frederick]

This chart summarized it pretty well for me:

https://inspectapedia.com/water/Water-Tank-Size-Requirements.php

What about my CSV question? Is Valveman suggesting that since I am getting the bigger tank, I should forego the CSV? I think that is what he said.

 

[Valveman]

Everybody thinks those big pressure tanks are full of water. In reality they have to be 75% air, as the air is used as a spring to push out the water in the other 25% of the tank. And the charts show draw down amount with the perfect air charge, which rarely happens in the real world. So I find the charts to be an overestimate of the actual draw down amount.

And yes with 20 gallons of draw down and no long term or outside watering requirements, the CSV is not going to be of much benefit. When you turn on a 2.5 GPM shower, the 20 gallons of draw down in the big tank will supply the shower for about 8-10 minutes before the pump even starts at 40 PSI. Then the pump will have to run another minute or two to fill the tank to 55 PSI, where the CSV is set, before the CSV can even start to work. So you would be in the shower for at least 10 minutes before you ever started seeing the strong constant pressure from a CSV. This means for the entire 10 minute shower you will see the pressure decreasing from 60 to 40 PSI.

Many people with tankless or instant water heaters will find out that at about 45 PSI the flow through the shower head has decreased so much the instant water heater flow switch drops and turns off the hot water. Only after the pump starts at 40 and the pressure increases to about 50 PSI will the instant heater start up again. With a smaller tank and a CSV the pressure would stay at a constant 50 PSI for the entire shower, even in you are in the shower for a month. Not only is constant pressure much stronger and more enjoyable in the shower, but it is sometimes the only way to make an instant water heater stay on.

Now if you are out of power and use the hand pump to pressure the tank to 45 PSI, you will only have about 5 gallons of water in the 80 gallon tank to use as needed. To get 20 gallons in that tank you would either need to pump it up to 60 PSI or let the air out to 23 PSI, so you could get 20 gallons out of the tank as the pressure drops from 45 to 25.

Using a smaller 20 gallon size tank (5 gallon draw) with a CSV would give you constant pressure in the shower after only 2 minutes. So by the time you get the temp adjusted the pressure will be strong and constant for the rest of the shower. Then by adjusting the air pressure from 38 to 23 after a power outage, you could pump in the same 5 gallons of water to use as you would have in the 80 gallon tank without re-adjusting the air pressure.

There are always trade offs to make. A large tank is good when needing the hand pump, but will cause wide swings in pressure when working normally as on a day to day basis. Another idea would be to use both size tanks. Use the CSV with the 4.5 gallon size tank (38 PSI air charge) for your day to day water needs so you have strong constant pressure all the time, then open a valve to the 80 gallon tank (which has a 23 PSI air charge) only when using the hand pump.

 

[Tom Frederick]

Thanks for the clarification. I actually never use the hand pump. It is only there for emergencies. From what you are saying, it seems that I may have a better experience--and still the ability to use my hand pump of I go with a smaller tank and a CSV. Is that correct? Can I go with a 44 gallon tank instead of 80 and utilize a CSV, or is a 44 gallon tank still too large to get full utilization from the CSV?

Also, we talked about iron a bit back. I have 2.5 ppm soluble iron. I also have a "whole house cartridge iron filter" (that I plan to get rid of) that fills up with rust colored sludge every month and has to be replaced. Would that "sludge" gum up the CSV, or is that normal? If the CSV is installed with unions, could it be maintained (cleaned) every once in a while, and swapped out easily if it fails?

 

[Valveman]

The CSV will work with any size tank. But the larger the tank the longer you have to wait to see the constant pressure from the CSV. A 44 gallon tank holds about 12 gallons of water. This means with a 3 GPM shower, the pressure would decrease from 60 to 40 for 4 minutes before the pump starts and you start seeing stronger pressure. But that is not too bad. It might even take 4 minutes to get the hot water to the shower and the temp adjusted.

You don't have to take a CSV1A out of line to clean it. The top red cap just unscrews and you can easily pull out the gut pack. Wash it in CLR or what ever is needed and stick it back in. Like I said the CSV1A won't clog any easier than the check valve or pump impellers. So if the CSV is getting clogged up it won't be the only problem.

 

[LLigetfa]

All of the above assume starting with a full tank which is seldom the case. One could always raise the cut-in and tighten up the delta on a large tank but if buying a new tank that could be considered an added expense.

 

[Tom Frederick]

Thank you!

 

[Tom Frederick]

Had a long talk with my well guy today. He agreed with all we have discussed here but had two questions:

(1) What is the lowest volume of water demand is needed for CSV to keep pump running at 55psi? We agree that a CSV is good on high demand, but what about low?
(2) A CSV will reduce on/off and prolong the motor side of the pump, but will teh back pressure reduce the life of the pump side? There are a lot of parts on the pump side that folks forget about...impellers, diffuser, etc...

He also has 35 years in the well business and he worked for a company 15 years ago that started putting in a lot of CSVs. A year later they took out over half of them do to problems. Do these problems still exist, or has the quality improved? He also asks, "if a CSV is such a great thing, why are they in so few residential applications?" Any thoughts?

I am looking at your CSV at CycleStopValves.com and I see the identical one on AMazon for a different price. Is there a quality difference? It looks like the Amazon one is supplied by CycleStopValve.com but does not have to logo on the red cap.

Thanks, again, for all your insights!

 

[Valveman]

Had a long talk with my well guy today. He agreed with all we have discussed here but had two questions:

(1) What is the lowest volume of water demand is needed for CSV to keep pump running at 55psi? We agree that a CSV is good on high demand, but what about low?
(2) A CSV will reduce on/off and prolong the motor side of the pump, but will teh back pressure reduce the life of the pump side? There are a lot of parts on the pump side that folks forget about...impellers, diffuser, etc...

He also has 35 years in the well business and he worked for a company 15 years ago that started putting in a lot of CSVs. A year later they took out over half of them do to problems. Do these problems still exist, or has the quality improved? He also asks, "if a CSV is such a great thing, why are they in so few residential applications?" Any thoughts?

I am looking at your CSV at CycleStopValves.com and I see the identical one on AMazon for a different price. Is there a quality difference? It looks like the Amazon one is supplied by CycleStopValve.com but does not have to logo on the red cap.

Thanks, again, for all your insights!

You don't even need a CSV for high demand, it is made to only start working when you are using low demands. The smaller CSV1A, as you need, is designed to deliver an average of 1 GPM. That is because most pump/motors only need about 2/10s of a GPM to remain cool.

When I was a kid (50 years ago) all my toys were made with impellers for wheels and pump shafts for axles, so I am very familiar with all the parts of a pump. Back pressure is a good thing for pumps. Back pressure makes the motor draw lower amperage and run cooler. Back pressure just makes the pump think it is in a deeper well, which is what makes it pump less water. The same pump that will produce 10 GPM from 100' well can only put out 1 GPM from a 300' deep well. And the pump man can use the SAME pump to supply your house with 10 GPM from a 100' well, and supply 1 GPM for a neighbor who has a deep 300' well that only produces 1 GPM.

Any company that has had to remove 50% of the CSV's they installed, didn't know what they were doing, and were just lucky the other 50% fell within the normal operating parameters for the CSV. As I said earlier, the CSV has an AVERAGE of 1 GPM minimum flow. But you have to know how to figure the back pressure to make sure that happens. The minimum flow can actually be from 1/10th to 2 GPM, depending on the amount of back pressure. A pump that can produce high back pressure will have 2 GPM minimum flow. A pump that can barely reach the pressure switch shut off pressure will only get 1/10th of a GPM flow. A pump guy who knows what he is doing, would pick a pump in the middle of these two extremes, the same way we do when helping people choose a pump. Luckily most pumps have the right amount of backpressure, even though some installers don't know how to figure it.

For instance I had a pump installer burning up motors and was blaming it on the CSV. However he was installing 3/4HP, 18 GPM submersibles in wells with a water level of about 40' deep. At that depth this pump can only produce 64 PSI of back pressure. And with a pressure switch shut off of 60 PSI, it didn't even make a 1/10th of a GPM minimum flow through the CSV. So of course he was burning up motors. Had he used a 1HP, 18 GPM pump or a 3/4HP, 10 GPM pump the back pressure would have been high enough to push 1 GPM through the CSV, and the pump would have lasted 30 years. Did he learn anything and try to solve his problem? No. He just wanted to blame it on anything but himself, and therefore says CSV's burn up motors and he will never use another. I wonder if he realizes those 1 HP pumps he put in at the same time have now lasted 20 years? Probably doesn't want to think about that. LOL

Figuring back pressure and minimum flow is easy for any pump man worth half his salt. If he can't figure simple back pressure, it should really make you worry about all the other important stuff he has to figure to make a long lasting pump system.

Now, "why doesn't every system have a Cycle Stop Valve after 25 years?" Because many installers can't even figure back pressure, much less wrap their heads around some of the other ways a CSV changes things like tank sizing. Or..."My dad did it this way, and that is the way I will do it to the day I die." Then you have the really good installers who installed them right 25 years ago, and haven't been back since. They may not mention a CSV because they know it is the reason they won't get a chance to replace your pump again in their lifetime. Selling a disruptive product like the CSV isn't easy. The change is like going from horse and buggy to the car. Some people are just too old to change, while others will tell you how bad automobiles are, because they have a pen full of horses and barn full of buggies to sell.

There are lots of genuine CSV's for sale on Amazon, but Cycle Stop Valves Inc. does not sell directly through Amazon. I wish they didn't make it look like we are the supplier, because we are not. We are the manufacturer and we sell to distributors who re-sale on Amazon. You will notice they really low ball the price. This is because Cycle Stop Valves are top of the list on many search engines. They want to get people to their web page, so they offer a low price on the most searched for item, which is the CSV. There wouldn't be so many people selling them and so many good reviews if they didn't work. If you want to know how good something works, read the reviews of people who have one. Don't listen to the installer who wants to sell you something completely different because he makes more money that way.

 

[militaryman]

Had a long talk with my well guy today. He agreed with all we have discussed here but had two questions:

(1) What is the lowest volume of water demand is needed for CSV to keep pump running at 55psi? We agree that a CSV is good on high demand, but what about low?
(2) A CSV will reduce on/off and prolong the motor side of the pump, but will teh back pressure reduce the life of the pump side? There are a lot of parts on the pump side that folks forget about...impellers, diffuser, etc...

He also has 35 years in the well business and he worked for a company 15 years ago that started putting in a lot of CSVs. A year later they took out over half of them do to problems. Do these problems still exist, or has the quality improved? He also asks, "if a CSV is such a great thing, why are they in so few residential applications?" Any thoughts?

I am looking at your CSV at CycleStopValves.com and I see the identical one on AMazon for a different price. Is there a quality difference? It looks like the Amazon one is supplied by CycleStopValve.com but does not have to logo on the red cap.

Thanks, again, for all your insights!

I had a very similar conversation with my well guy. He has never installed one, but has heard of them. He is skeptical to say the least and wanted me to return the sidekick and go with a weltrol 202, so I'm lost as to what to do. I explained the csv as best I could, I may send him this to read.

I already purchased the sidekick but haven't installed yet. My pump kicks on every 8-9 mins to pressurize the tank from 40 back to 60 psi. It's been doing this for months. It does this when there is no demand. It operates the same when I am in the shower (less time than 9 minutes, but normal), although the flow seemed low when I moved in, the shower flow has reduced significantly in recent months. I thought my system was short cycling and from googling that led me to think the bladder tank was bad. But after talking to the well guy, he said its the foot valve. So I am waiting for him to come back out and fix or replace the pump (original from 91' along with the bladder). Looking at a Grandfos 3/4 hp 10 GPM pump for a salty $1200, supposedly best of the best? Not sure if that's going to have proper flow, I will ask. I bought the house 2 years ago, so I don't know the depth or anything.