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18.0 DIAGNOSIS HOME WATER PUMP - DO-IT-YOURSELF - DIY TIPS

While my bad back won't let me do a lot of work that I used to do, my do-it-yourself skills still help. When our water pump started turning on every couple of seconds, I knew that there was a problem. I opened the top of the pump house and noted that it was starting and stopping at the right pressure. So the problem was elsewhere.

I remembered that sometimes there is a problem with the tank. A tank is supposed to have air in it. Water compresses the air when the tank fills with water. If there is no air in the tank (the new tanks have a membrane that contains air), the pump will turn on and off repeatedly since water will not compress (a basic principle of hydraulics).

So I believed I had found the problem: a bad tank. I called our plumber and let him know that it was something of an emergency and described the symptoms plus what I thought the problem was.

That evening our plumber showed up with a new tank. He easily replaced the old one. He said that it was good that I called him because the pump would have burned out eventually. He felt that the five year old tank was faulty and that I might get a credit toward the new one.

So my do-it-yourself skills meant that the plumber showed up with the right part. If I had not understood and done nothing, the pump would have burned up. If I had called the plumber and not diagnosed it correctly, the plumber would have needed two trips to fix the problem (one to diagnose it and one to return with the new tank).

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