Sentry I or something similar?

Hi,
This forum has been so much help to my family I don't know how to thank all of you enough.

After 25 years of replacing pump motors and pumps every five years I finally think I am set with that project thanks to all of you.

I will end with 4GPM @60psi into my existing 86 Gal pressure tank (40/60 with low pressure cutoff), but I am still faced with what to do about water that containes H2s and Chlorine and possibly some manganese.

It was suggested to me (by Gary Slusser I think) that instead of chlorinating the well itself with pellets (Better Water System pellets) that caused a real MESS, I chlorinate after the pressure tank in the basement.

I can get a 100 gallon Sentry I Open Air System for around $1600. I have a large two story colonial with three bathrooms and 100 gallons of storage seems right. It will ease the pump load and provide additional pressure plus I can use the chlorine pellets with the dispenser mounted on top of the unit.

http://www.betterwaterind.com/Open-Air/Sentry I Open Air.html

or should I put something similar together myself? I looked, but I can't find "plans" for one.

Are any of you familiar with the Sentry I Open Air System or do you think I should build something similar and if so, are there plans or do you know what I should get?

Thanks as always.

John

I'm familiar with the Sentry 1 Open Air but I've never sold one. I have sold a number of the Sentry 1 casing mounted pellet droppers. I'm not a fan of either but they both have their place in my toolbox.

The type of chlorination systems that I've sold the most of is an inline pellet chlorinator. Have you looked at it, it's on my web site? It's <$800 including delivery. It takes up much less space (about 1/2 to 3/4), it's nonmechanical and nonelectric, and you don't have any humidity problems or the strength of the chlorine solution weakening or any odor of chlorine, or all that water etc. weight on a floor, or to be concerned about being without water because the switches or pump etc. quits or corrodes (or other things in the vicinity corrode) because of the chlorine in the air. And yes I know the open air has a cover but it isn't going to keep all the chlorine in the tank.

You will need a correctly sized for the peak demand flow rate carbon filter with any chlorination system.

Gary Slusser said:

I'm familiar with the Sentry 1 Open Air but I've never sold one. I have sold a number of the Sentry 1 casing mounted pellet droppers. I'm not a fan of either but they both have their place in my toolbox.

The type of chlorination systems that I've sold the most of is an inline pellet chlorinator. Have you looked at it, it's on my web site? It's <$800 including delivery. It takes up much less space (about 1/2 to 3/4), it's nonmechanical and nonelectric, and you don't have any humidity problems or the strength of the chlorine solution weakening or any odor of chlorine, or all that water etc. weight on a floor, or to be concerned about being without water because the switches or pump etc. quits or corrodes (or other things in the vicinity corrode) because of the chlorine in the air. And yes I know the open air has a cover but it isn't going to keep all the chlorine in the tank.

You will need a correctly sized for the peak demand flow rate carbon filter with any chlorination system.

Click to expand...

Thanks Gary,

I need additional water pressure for my rather large house and some sort of retention tank with enough reserve for the demand. I also have the extra space to install a retention tank. At least three or four feet of extra space which I intentionally left when I re-did the plumbing in the basement. In terms of a mineral tank I do have a 5 foot tall Manganese Greensand tank with a Autotrol 1550-TC that is left over from a Potassium Permanganate system that I disabled in favor of shock chlorination of the well directly.

Any ideas.

John

I can't agree with your plan. Your well pump should be sized to give you all the water your peak demand requires at the pressure you want to use.

A old 155, they haven't made them in like 15 years, is a softener control valve and incapable of successfully backwashing much greensand. A 263 or 268 is a better choice but the Clack WS-1 is the best choice.

Gary Slusser said:

I can't agree with your plan. Your well pump should be sized to give you all the water your peak demand requires at the pressure you want to use.

A old 155, they haven't made them in like 15 years, is a softener control valve and incapable of successfully backwashing much greensand. A 263 or 268 is a better choice but the Clack WS-1 is the best choice.

Click to expand...

When I posted questions about the pump it seemed that with a 4GPM well the best pump would be a 5GPM 1HP pump with at least 20 stages that could sustain 4GPM at 60 psi. That's what I bought. It cannot keep up with showers, watering, laundry, and toilets flushing. The house is too large especially when we have guests together with my entire family.

John

You should go back to the guy that suggests sizing pumps that way and kick him hard where it hurts the best. It wouldn't be someone that posts here I'm sure.

You don't need more water, you need to be able to get the water you need from the well to where you use it at the pressure you want to operate the system at. Assuming the well produces that volume, that is all the function of the pump and plumbing.

Gary Slusser said:

You should go back to the guy that suggests sizing pumps that way and kick him hard where it hurts the best. It wouldn't be someone that posts here I'm sure.

You don't need more water, you need to be able to get the water you need from the well to where you use it at the pressure you want to operate the system at. Assuming the well produces that volume, that is all the function of the pump and plumbing.

Click to expand...

How Gary? The sediment I have coming up is outrageous. The 5 micron Whole House filter has to be changed every week and starts out tasking away 7 psi with a new filter and graduallly reduces by 12 psi when it gets completely clogged.

I am used to gray to black water in the house. We don't drink it. I am removing all check valves when this new pump comes as suggested to reduce the "negative pressure" problem. The one at the service entrance is already removed.

The pump will produce 4GPM at 60 psi with my 86 gallon pressure pank (that holds around twenty something I guess) and 40/60 pressure switch. The 1HP motor that I put on the old pump last month is no better so I ordered the pump end that seemed to be recommended here. I tried to assess as best I could the "best of" the answers I got on the forum and I truly appreciated all answers, but it seems that I am still making the wrong choices and I keep spending money in the process. Can you be more sprecific?

John

Where is the pump thread, I can't seem to find it. I see a mention of a 20 gpm pump instead of a 4 gpm. Who told you a 4 gpm pump?

Gary Slusser said:

Where is the pump thread, I can't seem to find it. I see a mention of a 20 gpm pump instead of a 4 gpm. Who told you a 4 gpm pump?

Click to expand...

5GPM pump.

https://terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22835

Thanks Gary,

Regards,
John

I think your well is not producing the volume you need and your house certainly needs more than 4 gpm from the pump.

Getting rid of the disposable cartridge filter would help a lot. You should have a sand filter, a tank that traps sand, no actual filtering mineral, or an automatically backwashed filter. They don't have the pressure loss problem of.

Gary Slusser said:

I think your well is not producing the volume you need and your house certainly needs more than 4 gpm from the pump.

Getting rid of the disposable cartridge filter would help a lot. You should have a sand filter, a tank that traps sand, no actual filtering mineral, or an automatically backwashed filter. They don't have the pressure loss problem of.

Click to expand...

I plan to lower the pump in the well another 10 feet. Currently it is 20 feet above the bottom. I will check the water level and well depth when I pull it again, but I know I raised the pump 10 feet around fifteen years ago so it should be fine.

Thanks for the advice regarding the sand filter tank or automatic backwashed filter. I'll look into that.....unless I can use my Manganese Greensand filter (10" x 55" ) and Autotrol 155 from the old Pot Perm system I removed 5 years ago? ..although you did say "no actual filtering mineral" which I think leaves that option out.

Currently, the solutions from universities and NYS for low yield wells seem to point to storage tanks with pumps as in the Sentry I unit. Other than the diagrams in those reports, I can't seem to find any DIY plans for them which is why I looked at the Sentry I.

Examples of such reports:

Using Low-Yielding Wells from Penn State:

http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/XH0002.pdf

Individual Water Supply Wells - Fact Sheet #2 from the New York State Department of Health

http://www.dos.state.ny.us/CODE/pdf/FactSheetwells.pdf

John

Get the guvmint into anything other than the military and it seems to go to hell. Notice that in the NY link there is no mention of the amount of water stored in the well above the pump's inlet. Most wells in NY will be 6" diameter, and that means 1.47 gals/ft of water available above the pump's inlet; they only look at the recovery rate gpm.

From NY.
Peak Demand
Dealing with low-yielding wells requires an
understanding of peak demand. A well that yields
only 1 GPM of water can still produce 1,440 gallons
of water in day. However, water use in a home or
farm does not occur evenly during the day.
There are peak usage times, typically during the
morning and/or evening, when water demand is very
high. These peak demand periods usually last from
30 minutes to 2 hours. An adequate water system
must yield enough water to satisfy a peak demand
for at least 2 hours.
Let’s look at an example of how a low-yielding well
can fail to meet peak demand. A family of four lives
in a home with a well that yields about 1 GPM. On a
typical Saturday morning, there may be a 2-hour
peak demand period where water is used for multiple
loads of laundry, breakfast dishes, showers, toilets,
and sinks. Without water-saving appliances and
fixtures, the water use during this 2-hour period
could exceed 300 gallons. A 1-GPM well could only
provide 120 gallons of water during this peak
demand period, far short of what would be needed.

Penn State waits until page 4 before mentioning storage in the well. That's after going on about extra storage.... and had it been first, there would be no need for their example well/house to require extra storage.

And then we are told the pump should be sized for just less than the recovery rate gpm of the well (see below). That is BS but probably what got you into a too small 5 gpm pump. They are forgetting about the stored water volume. If the well has 3 gpm and you pump out 10 gpm for 20 minutes, do you need extra storage or a pump that won't deliver more than 3 gpm?

Peen State Extension Office (first)
Well Pump Capacity
The well pump for an intermediate storage water
system should have a rated pumping capacity
slightly less than the yield of the well. The pump
should be expected to operate more or less
continuously, if necessary, to keep the storage
reservoir full. Normally, a low-water cut-off switch
controlled by water-level sensors in the well should
be connected to a relay at the pump switch box. A
low-water signal relayed to the main switch should
override other pump controls and stop the pump if
the water level drops to a critically low point where
air or sediment would be pulled into the system.

Then later.
The amount of water stored in a well can be
increased by widening or deepening the well
borehole. For example, a typical 6-inch diameter
well with 100 feet of water in the borehole would
store 147 gallons of water.

The people that usually write this stuff are students and they copy from one web site and another and edit/add things they read here or there to make it their own. They are not out in the field actually doing this stuff and learning from their screw ups.

Let us know the info on the well when you get it.

Thanks for the response Gary. It was actually a poster on that other thread that I linked that recommended I pull up the 18 stage older F&W pump and the new 1HP I recently attached to it (in place of the 3/4 HP motor that belongs on it) because as the poster said it makes no difference - and he was right , it didn't.

He went on to say that:

"Putting the 1 HP motor on a 7 GPM pump will make the problem worse",
A 1 HP 5GS10 pump will give you lots of margin on head and about 4 GPM at 60 psi from 400 ft. You could buy the 5GS10 water end alone and use your 1 HP motor. You may have to change the Pumptec, or at least adjust it."

Currently the pump end is on backorder.

Last time I checked I had around a 100 foot column of water head in a 6 inch well with around a 4GPM recovery rate.

If I cancel the order, what should I get? And what should go in the basement for storage and/or water treatment?

Thanks for the help as always.

John

IMO you need current info on the well. Static water level is important but... you don't answer questions. Are you in a drought?

As you see, 4 gpm @ 60 psi is all but useless, you need like 13-15 for your size house. And with a 100' of water you have storage of 147 gals.. Plus the recovery rate as you pump water out. If you pump 10 gpm, you're taking 6 gpm out of the well. IMO you should more than a enough water for most usage.

If you are not now, there is something wrong.

I'd suggest my inline pellet chlorination system including a backwashed special carbon filter.

Gary Slusser said:

IMO you need current info on the well. Static water level is important but... you don't answer questions. Are you in a drought?

As you see, 4 gpm @ 60 psi is all but useless, you need like 13-15 for your size house. And with a 100' of water you have storage of 147 gals.. Plus the recovery rate as you pump water out. If you pump 10 gpm, you're taking 6 gpm out of the well. IMO you should more than a enough water for most usage.

If you are not now, there is something wrong.

I'd suggest my inline pellet chlorination system including a backwashed special carbon filter.

Click to expand...

I am not in a drought. What other questions? I didn't see any other questions. Draw down?

Just had a water quality test done today. Note: I chlorinated the well two days ago so not sure about accuracy:

Hardness: 3 gpg
Iron: 0.3 ppm/mg/l
pH: 8.1
TDS: 201 mg/l

John

Yeah the accuracy is probably off, you should have waited like 6-7 days.

Gary Slusser said:

Yeah the accuracy is probably off, you should have waited like 6-7 days.

Click to expand...

I'll check it again next week.

Also, the pump specs that would match a requirement for a 400 foot depth at 10-15 gpm at 60 psi would require a pump in the 3HP range such as the 3HP Goulds 10GS30 or larger. At least 10 gage or thicker wire too.

http://www.goulds.com/pdf/7310.pdf

Is that what you are suggesting I put down there? That is one expensive pump.

John

If that's the pump that will do the job, and you need 10 gage to run it, you buy it and new cable or do with less water OR, drill the well deeper or hydrofacture it. I don't see any other choices except for water conservation.