bjjb99
New Member
Greetings,
I'm nearing the end of having a new home built, and I have run into what I believe is a serious problem with the water flow rate inside the house. Coming from being on town water, I really don't have a good gauge of what being on a well is supposed to be like.
As you can tell by my join date, I'm absolutely new to this forum. Apologies if I stumble around with terminology.
Here are my symptoms:
I turn on the water to the tub in the master bathroom (the largest fixture in the house, as far as I can tell). Initially I get perhaps 4-5 gpm out of the fixture, but this rapidly diminishes over about 15 seconds to an average of around 2 gpm. Mind you, this is a big tub, and it's going to take about 40 minutes to fill at that rate. While the tub is running, I can turn on any other faucet in the house and I get _maybe_ 1 gallon every 5 minutes out of it... a trickle.
Here's what I know or have measured:
The well is 6 inches in diameter and 600 feet deep. The pump is set at 500 feet from the surface. The water comes up to within 30 feet of the surface (measured using a measuring tape and a plumb bob). The well recharges at between 3 and 5 gpm. I do not know the pump's horsepower rating. I believe the pipe running to the home is either 1 or 1.25 inches. The basement floor of the home is located a further 15 feet up a hill from the well.
The water enters the basement level of the home. The pressure tank is a Goulds Pump V140, used at 40-60 psi. It takes around 2.5 minutes to go from 60 psi to 40 psi when the master bath fixture is open, and it takes around 1.5 minutes to get back to 60 psi once the pump starts running.
The water passes through a single filter (make and model unknown, other than "low pressure drop, high flow") and then enters a manifold distribution system. From there, the water flows through 0.5 inch PEX for about 80 feet until it reaches the master bath tub fixture located one floor above (call it 12 feet up).
The home is 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, with an unfinished basement. Eventually the finished basement will add another bedroom and 1.5 baths, so I'd like to plan for that.
It would be nice to be able to run the master bath tub while the kitchen sink and either a washing machine or dishwasher are running. Heck, toss in a toilet flush or two as well. All the fixtures/appliances are on the floor above the pressure tank and manifold.
My builder actually told me "well, that's what you can sometimes expect when you're on a well". Based on your collective knowledge, is 2 gpm reasonable for a home on a well? Did I miss something? Is something undersized or underpowered?
I'm guessing from reading some of the posts here that going to a larger horsepower pump is not necessarily the solution, given the recharge rate of the well. Is this a case of "pump the water up into a storage tank, and use a booster pump from there to feed the home"?
Any thoughts would be appreciated...
BJJB
I'm nearing the end of having a new home built, and I have run into what I believe is a serious problem with the water flow rate inside the house. Coming from being on town water, I really don't have a good gauge of what being on a well is supposed to be like.
As you can tell by my join date, I'm absolutely new to this forum. Apologies if I stumble around with terminology.
Here are my symptoms:
I turn on the water to the tub in the master bathroom (the largest fixture in the house, as far as I can tell). Initially I get perhaps 4-5 gpm out of the fixture, but this rapidly diminishes over about 15 seconds to an average of around 2 gpm. Mind you, this is a big tub, and it's going to take about 40 minutes to fill at that rate. While the tub is running, I can turn on any other faucet in the house and I get _maybe_ 1 gallon every 5 minutes out of it... a trickle.
Here's what I know or have measured:
The well is 6 inches in diameter and 600 feet deep. The pump is set at 500 feet from the surface. The water comes up to within 30 feet of the surface (measured using a measuring tape and a plumb bob). The well recharges at between 3 and 5 gpm. I do not know the pump's horsepower rating. I believe the pipe running to the home is either 1 or 1.25 inches. The basement floor of the home is located a further 15 feet up a hill from the well.
The water enters the basement level of the home. The pressure tank is a Goulds Pump V140, used at 40-60 psi. It takes around 2.5 minutes to go from 60 psi to 40 psi when the master bath fixture is open, and it takes around 1.5 minutes to get back to 60 psi once the pump starts running.
The water passes through a single filter (make and model unknown, other than "low pressure drop, high flow") and then enters a manifold distribution system. From there, the water flows through 0.5 inch PEX for about 80 feet until it reaches the master bath tub fixture located one floor above (call it 12 feet up).
The home is 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, with an unfinished basement. Eventually the finished basement will add another bedroom and 1.5 baths, so I'd like to plan for that.
It would be nice to be able to run the master bath tub while the kitchen sink and either a washing machine or dishwasher are running. Heck, toss in a toilet flush or two as well. All the fixtures/appliances are on the floor above the pressure tank and manifold.
My builder actually told me "well, that's what you can sometimes expect when you're on a well". Based on your collective knowledge, is 2 gpm reasonable for a home on a well? Did I miss something? Is something undersized or underpowered?
I'm guessing from reading some of the posts here that going to a larger horsepower pump is not necessarily the solution, given the recharge rate of the well. Is this a case of "pump the water up into a storage tank, and use a booster pump from there to feed the home"?
Any thoughts would be appreciated...
BJJB