Dear Clean Water Man:
The other day, our power went out for several hours and ever since we have had very low water pressure. What is going on?
Sincerely,
Trickles, Greenwich, ConnecticutDear Trickles:
After I met with you and inspected your water system, I repaired the problem. I wanted to post here so that my readers could know what happened. Your water system consisted of a submersible pump, a Well-X-Trol bladder tank, a backwashing aggregate filter, and a water softener. Here is what happened:
The power went out but your family continued to use water. The Well-X-Trol tank has several gallons of water stored within the air pressurized bladder and is generally enough for a few toilet flushes or turning on other fixtures. As the water emptied out of the bladder tank, a great amount of iron sludge came off of the inside of the bladder and entered the aggregate filter. While this filter is designed to remove this precipitated iron, the huge amount of sludgy iron clogged the filter and all it needed was a few extra backwashes, which I took care of while I was at your home. The pressure improved after the manual backwashes.
The best approach is to stop using water when the power goes off so to prevent this fouling of the filtration system.
Check out my website at www.cleanwaterman.com
Water problems in Connecticut? Call Ted Mullen, The Clean Water Man, at 203-417-9601.
The other day, our power went out for several hours and ever since we have had very low water pressure. What is going on?
Sincerely,
Trickles, Greenwich, ConnecticutDear Trickles:
After I met with you and inspected your water system, I repaired the problem. I wanted to post here so that my readers could know what happened. Your water system consisted of a submersible pump, a Well-X-Trol bladder tank, a backwashing aggregate filter, and a water softener. Here is what happened:
The power went out but your family continued to use water. The Well-X-Trol tank has several gallons of water stored within the air pressurized bladder and is generally enough for a few toilet flushes or turning on other fixtures. As the water emptied out of the bladder tank, a great amount of iron sludge came off of the inside of the bladder and entered the aggregate filter. While this filter is designed to remove this precipitated iron, the huge amount of sludgy iron clogged the filter and all it needed was a few extra backwashes, which I took care of while I was at your home. The pressure improved after the manual backwashes.
The best approach is to stop using water when the power goes off so to prevent this fouling of the filtration system.
Check out my website at www.cleanwaterman.com
Water problems in Connecticut? Call Ted Mullen, The Clean Water Man, at 203-417-9601.
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2 comments:
This post really helped me! I recently moved into an older home- my first house with a well. We had our power turned off for a little while to do some electrical work, and we continued to use the water until it ran out. When the power was turned back on, the water did not come back on at all. Through searching the internet I found I had to 'prime the pump', by switching the little lever back & forth, watching the psi, blah blah blah. Well we thought our problem would be fixed when our psi returned to about 50-55 after following all the steps, but when we went to turn the water on, it only trickled out. After reading your post I went back down and manually flushed the filter next to the well x-trol tank, and a ton of stuff came out! After flushing a few times until the filter was mostly clear, I went up & checked the water & all is good. Thanks so much for this post. I had to comment because I'm sure I saved myself some money not having to call a plumber :) I hope this post helps others like it has helped me.
arrived here after a power outage and found myself unable to get the water going again - very helpful post. Thank you very much (water's back on now)
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