pressure tank

How would a typical installer tackle this installation. I have a well that I would like too install a pressure tank on. I live in a place that has a required burial depth of below 6 feet. The room inside where they would typically install the pressure tank where there is a drain located and because the well is located right outside from here about 40 feet (laundry room) has a deck built on the house. How would they manage to do this. Would the deck have to be removed? The house is about 4 feet in the ground. Would they have to remove the deck, dig under the house, break up a section of concrete and run the pipe inside of the laundry room? Do they just use heat tape and not have to dig down that far? Please help me on this one. Thanks

I don't think I would want to trust heat tape for the duration.

The pipe has to get to the room somehow and that would be up to who ever you choose to get it there. But it should be below the frost line.
bob...

I'm not sure I understand your question!

Does the well currently supply water to the house? (but doesn't have a pressure tank on it?) Or is the well used for say irrigation, and not currently plumbed to the house?

If the frost line is 6', then all of that needs to be run at that depth or you risk freezing (and maybe damaging, but at least blocking) the line from the well to the house.

Where in the world do you live that you need to bury waterlines 6' deep?

Not everyone knows this little fact. But frost that normally goes on average of 4 feet can be knocked down an extra couple of feet by driving over the ground with vehicles.

bob...

Jack the Pipe

It is common (but not in residential construction) to jack or drive a pipe horizontally to avoid having to dig up something. The process in your case would be to find the nearest place to where you want to come up in the laundry room and dig a driving pit deep enough and long enough to work in. You would also dig a hole in the laundry room to receive the pipe. The back of the driving pit is blocked with timber to provide a base for a hydraulic jack and you jack lengths of steel pipe through the ground, using pipe such as would be used for a driven well.

If it is close enough and the ground would not collapse the hole, I suppose you could drill the hole with some kind of rig.

The system works where you don't have a lot of rock, and you must be sure to clear the footing.

You can use the drive pipe for the water or you can drive a pipe large enough to push a poly pipe through.

You need to do a cost tradeoff to see whether it is better to jack a pipe or find a place to dig the from the surface. In residential construction it is usually less expensive to dig the trench.

Thanks alot for the replies. I live in North Dakota. The whole state seems to have this frostline. The well isn't on the house though it is only use for irrigation purposes. My outside well hydrants are 7 feet below ground and they still freeze up sometimes. It could be because of inadequate drainage or something. I don't know if it matters but they say it needs to be below 6 feet not at 6 feet. That is to bad about the heat tape though. That would've been a simple solution to the problem. That would've been something that even I could've done. Is it possible to use heat tape if you make the whole thing accessable so that you can replace it in the event of failure. Thanks

Engineered Solutions

There are heat tape systems that go inside the pipe. Google "internal pipe heat tracing tape". The ones that I have found are very expensive but you could shop around. I have a customer in northern Maine that uses it in a system with a submersible pump in a lake that supplies water throughout the winter.

You could compare that with running an insulated pipe with heat tape inside of a protective pipe. You should be able to put pipe insulation over pipe and heat tape to make an assembly that you could push through a 2" PVC conduit that would protect the insulation and the heat tape.

You could probably work from inside the laundry room to drill a hole through the wall out past the porch for the conduit. Then work from beyond the porch to get down to the required depth, or extend the heat tape if that is a better solution.

Or how about trenching around the side of the house and come in on the side of the room or, somewhere else and run the water line inside the cellar wall to where you want it?

But why do you want a pressure tank in the house now when it sounds as if you haven't had one before now? I'd use a Cycle Stop Valve in the well with a buried and insulated (underground type) small pressure tank by the well instead of all this digging etc.. Or set the irrigation so the pump doesn't suht off until you stop watering.

Gary
Quality Water Associates

If you don't want to be able to hand water or wash the car with this water, you don't need a tank. Just use a timer like Gary suggested.


bob...

Thanks alot for the replies. Its for irrigation and livestock (forgot to mention). We have to turn it on and off so many times I have read that it is bad for the pump to do this. If I had a pressure tank on it with a pressure switch I could use an automatic water of which would save me plenty time during the bitter winter months and also during the summer. I was thinkin about converting my front yard hydrant into the waterline so I wouldn't have to dig anything. Typically as I stated earlier the pipe is 7' below ground inorder to prevent it from freezing. I did this on one of my other hydrants and it worked to prevent it from freezing. The hydrant has a 1" I.D. galvanized pipe with a 1/2" I.D. copper pipe running in the middle of it with a hydrant head on top connected to the copper pipe(the hydrant head slides freely on the galvanized pipe) and on the bottom of the copper pipe there is three 0 rings on it that allow water flow and water turn off to happen while your opening and closing the hydrant head on top. I ran heat tape along the copper pipe and started the run 6' below ground. The heat tape fits in that small gap between the copper pipe and the galvanized pipe. This probably isn't a common procedure but it has worked so far. What do you pros think about this installation. I wouldn't have to dig anything if I did it this way and also I could do it myself of which would save me alot on costs, but there might be something wrong with it I guess. Thanks alot

Mayby not even worth a reply but would the installation that I detailed in the last post work. Mayby I could run 2 lines of which where self regulating heat tape and if one broke then perhaps I could turn on the other one. This would ensure that I had a back up incase one failed on me. As always thanks for you generosity in answering our questions in this forum.

I'm confused as to what you described about your hydrant. A hydrant is nothing more than a valve under the frost line actuated by the lever up top that moves a rod inside the 1" pipe to open and close the valve. It also has a drain down below to drain the 1" pipe when the valve is closed.

So I'm not sure what you are describing.

bob...

Some are built different that others though. For instance one of my hydrants has a solid rod in the middle that is used to open and close that valve on the bottom and the water flows OUTSIDE of it. The other one I am referring to has a 1/2" ID COPPER PIPE in the middle that is used to open and close the valve on the bottom. The water flows INSIDE the copper pipe not outside. I simply stated that I have the hydrant where the water flows inside the copper pipe so that allowed me to be able to place a heat tape in the small gab between the 1/2" copper pipe and the 1" id galvanized pipe. This could be my line that I could run into the house and place a pressure tank and switch on it (no digging required). The whole line would be kept from freezing with heat tape and insulation around it. I would build it so that if the heat tape ever failed I could simply and easily remove insulation and replace with a new one. Of course I can't fit any insulation in the space between the copper and galvanized pipe.....the heat tape even barely fits in that gap. A hydrant of mine was constantly freezing on me and I did this and it has been OK so far. On this hydrant during the winter I don't even have to close it to drain the water that is left in it. I wish I had a picture

I don't want to sound cynical, but how do you get the heat tape inside the 1" pipe and keep it all from leaking? And what does the 1/2" copper pipe hook to? I must see one of these in person to make my mind accept the design.

bob...

And I would not rely on heat tape due to power outages.

The hydrant with the copper pipe inside it, it isn't a frost free hydrant, or you wouldn't have to use heat tape. If it is supposed to be frost free, then there's a leak in the one that froze.

Gary
Quality Water Associates