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.