Fair warning - this is going to be a long post. But I hope to make it interesting, First, a little background on this post: our house was built in 2001, and the location/height of the house relative to the gravity-fed city water system means we have very low inlet water pressure. As a result, all of the houses on our street have a water pump / pressure tank combination, similar to what you would have if you had a well.
Our particular tank/pump started having problems a year or so ago, where we would notice the pump cycling more often. It looked like the tank was not holding a charge of air. Take a look at the following picture from this page to see how the air tank operates (click for larger view):
So you can see that if the air leaks out, then there won't be as much pressure to keep the water pressure up, and the pump will have to fill things up faster.
That was what was happening at our house. I could see some rust on the back side of the tank, so I suspected that was the cause of the leak. But the leak wasn't bad enough, and I could use an air compressor to pump up the air tank and give us a few more months before I'd have to do that again.
Well, as things you put off usually do, the tank got worse and worse, where I was pumping things up every week. I knew I had to replace the pump. I called around locally for prices, and was shocked at what this system costs (I wanted the same make/model of pump and tank, as I felt that they were the best quality). I found a few cheaper alternatives, but they scared me a little (there were models with no tank - I'm not sure how long that would last).
I found out the company that makes the pump is about 30 minutes away in Rhode Island! Great, I thought! I'll call them and go pick one up. Unfortunately, they make you go through a distributor, and the local distributors have terrible markups and they charge you the freight charge it takes to get it from RI to their store.
I found a place in New York which had the exact model I wanted, at a significant cost savings from what I could get it locally. Plus, their shipping was pretty reasonable (well, still expensive, but not as bad as others). So I ordered the pump. Ironic I had to go to NY to get an item made 30 minutes away... Anyway, they arranged for a freight company to ship it (it weighs 150# - too big for UPS to handle). But I learned later that I was responsible for getting this off the truck (they were only a freight company - but for an extra $120 they would send out a truck with a lift gate! [no thanks]). So I took the day of the delivery off, and waited for the truck. Luck was with me, because the truck that delivered it had a lift gate, and the driver was nice enough to bring the tank up to the top of my driveway! It was good, because here is what was delivered:
I got the box down to the basement (it really wasn't heavy - the 150# included the pallet), and here's the new pump next to the old one, which is still hooked up to the plumbing:
So off I go to Home Depot to get a bunch of plumbing parts, copper tubes and elbows, joints, including a blowtorch and solder, etc. (I honestly thought I had a blowtorch already, but couldn't find it in the garage). It wouldn't be my only trip there...
Step one: remove the old pump and tank. The house plumbing had a bypass already set up, so I bypassed the pump and removed it. Here's what it looks like after I took it out:
Notice the bad rust down the side of the pump. The connection between the pump and the tank was leaking, and had rusted out the tank. If you figure the tank was installed when the house was built, it had 8 years to corrode.
I was pleased to see the new pump had an electronic controller, instead of the mechanical controller the old one had. Unfortunately they also changed the locations of the inlet connection, and I had to do some extra piping.
Now comes the fun part - I salvaged the existing shutoff valves and check valve, so that required some creative ways of draining water pipes. You can't heat up a copper pipe if it has water in it - trust me, I tried. All you do is make steam!
Step two through 'n': install the pump. So I got the new pump hooked up, and turned on the water, and... A LEAK!! Drat!! Double-Drat! Now I had to take things apart and fix it. The piping of the pump is a combination of screw threads (requiring Teflon tape) and solder joints. You get one chance to tighten a threaded joint, because after you solder it to the other pipes, you can't tighten it any more (it is fixed solid). And it's not like an electric circuit where you can use a meter to check for shorts, etc. You don't know until you pressurize the system if it is leak-proof.
Well, let's just say plumbing is not a profession I will be switching to, because even after two more tries (and multiple trips to Home Depot - they know me there in the plumbing section), I still couldn't tighten the screw joint tight enough. I was frustrated at how much soldering and cutting and re-soldering I was doing.
So I turned to the font of all knowledge - the Internet! I learned that just using Teflon tape alone sometimes doesn't seal things. They suggested pipe dope, and I got it during my next trip.
In the mean time, the family is suffering through wimpy showers and slow flowing faucets. They were "encouraging" me to quickly get the job done, but were also very understanding!
After the guy in the plumbing dept. saw me for the 3rd time, he told me about a product called Sharkbite. It's a connection system where you snap things together. That sounded ideal for my problem of tightening things up. If there was a leak, I could disconnect the pipes, and try again without soldering. I wasn't too sure about it, but then I noticed that the joints on the pump itself were sharkbite joints - so they obviously had some quality behind them.
So after multiple times, I finally got things fixed, and thus far, no leaks!! Here are some "after" pictures - note the creative sloped pipe (hey, who said pipes have to be only horizontal or vertical!).
All in all it was a good learning experience. It could have gone quicker and easier if I had called in someone to do it, but my time is cheap, and right now we need to watch all our pennies. The end result I think is pretty good, if I do say so for myself!
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