Sounds like the problem, because the well water pressure tank does not sound at all hollow when tapped. It's probably completely full of water.
^^^
Okay, so you don't really need to "drain" out the water then? Just add air?
Turn the power to the pump off and open some spigots , then loosen some plumbing
If the bladder is shot you will need to remove the tank to repair it.
You need to drain the water or you won't get an accurate reading on the air pressure. Typically the fact that it is waterlogged means the bladder is bad and you will need to disassemble the tank and change the bladder. Just adding air will be a temporary fix at best.
When I was a kid various expansion tanks needed to be drained and repressurized with air nearly every year. There was no bladder. Pumping up the air occasionally would be a pain but a no-cost solution ?
Bubbles float and would displace that water with enough pressure.
Usually those systems have 2 Schrader valves located in the pipeline and when the pump shuts off the water on the incoming side of the check valve drains back a few feet creating an "air shot" to put air into the tank, the next time the pump comes on. Those are usually bladder less tanks.
Check this video it explains it.Bubbles float and would displace that water with enough pressure.
Right, but if that isn’t a closed system like a furnace expansion tank, the air would purge out the kitchen sink faucet as soon as it was opened.Bubbles float and would displace that water with enough pressure.
Yeah this all seems pretty complicated when all I've ever had to do is drain my tank down and pump up the bladder with my bicycle pump and then turn the pump back on. I'm sure things have changed since the last time 10 or 15 years ago only on a bladder-less tank. That was before youtube though so I just followed grandpa's lead and can certainly understand the trepidation to jump in and fix it. We always figured 7-10Xs starting inrush on a motor to be safe. I wonder how an otherwise properly sized battery bank would hold up under that kind of load?
Do you think 36psi on the tank and 20 cut-in/ 45 cut-out is OK for our small house? The system only pressurizes three outlets: Kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and shower. Occasionally it delivers water to a washing machine.
I am thinking you could be closer on the cutout to the 36psi bladder pressure. Pressure isn’t flow, but building pressure takes more watts out of your system. On the other side is that you’d run a little more often but ‘I think’ you be better off not running as high of a pressure.
This is what we did. Seems to have worked at least for now. We´re back to being able to get 5-6 liters out of the tap without having the pump kick on.
Watts is not much of a concern. Our solar system is properly sized.
Around here typical municipal systems are 100psi and some have pressure regs at the entrance to bring it down to 60.
Folks who depend on a city water supply don't realize there's always maintenance involved. Expect to do this from time to time. For me keeping a 25watt lightbulb going in the pump shed during freezing weather is my most important job right now.
We were Okay for a while until this week. I noticed the pump starting to cycle more frequently, and finally yesterday it started rapid cycling whenever someone opened a tap. We turned off the pump's circuit breaker, opened the taps and drained off the water in the system with our bike pump. Then we closed all taps and kept pumping with the bike pump until it got up to it's usual 25-30psi range according to the pressure gauge.
