Hunt the water leak

[pagan witch]

I know that there have been many "Why does my water pump keep cycling ?" questions in the past and tghe answer is always there is a leak, the pressure switch is faulty or the accumulator tank is knackered but here's what caused ours. . .

 

Wych Way's water pump doesn't cycle - end of - never has. Then one day it did - just once. Then over a period of some days / weeks it got more noteworthy to the point where we'd got so used to it we could sleep through it. The problem we had was simply that we couldn't find the leak - or evidence of it.

 

By turning a tap on then off and allowing the pump to re-charge the accumulator, then filling a glass until the pump kicked in again we knew that we were loosing around 1 pint every 45 minutes or so - surely that can't have been hard to find ?

 

In the end our youngest crew member heard a drip - it was coming from behind a wall panel that we know has the heating system header tank behind it.

 

We found a blamanche like 'gloop' had formed on top of the header tank and was slightly pressing down on the float, allowing a very slow dribble of water into the header tank. This then overflowed via the aptly named overflow pipe directly down to bilge, where being clean it got lost amongst the contents of the bilge. Due to the bad weather at the time we'd put the extra bilge water down to rain water (we have a typical ex hire boat large cruiser stern deck).

 

Still don't know what the gloop is / was but cleaned it out, checked float valve level was OK and we're back to no cycling pump.

[John Orentas]

I know that there have been many "Why does my water pump keep cycling ?" questions in the past and tghe answer is always there is a leak, the pressure switch is faulty or the accumulator tank is knackered but here's what caused ours. . .

 

 

 

Hi Witchy.

 

Not quite true that there is always a leak, at least not in the accepted sense.. I could be that water is seeping back into the pump inlet through the one way valve which is always part of the system.. So the pressurised water is finding it's way through the pump and back into the feed pipe thus lowering the pressure.

 

If it is a Sureflo type pump the valves are a diaphragm type, a cleaning up of the valve seats will often clear the problem, sometimes the problem will simply go away on it's own.

[pagan witch]

Agree with that possibility and in the absence of a flood we'de have had the pump out to check. Luckily our youngest's keen ears heard the drip first.

 

Saw Squeers on the T & M yesterday or day before - went through Willington

[smokeyfruitbat]

we had the same problem. i found out that water was passing back into the tank, so much for the non return valve. changed the valve and no longer a problem

[John Orentas]

Saw Squeers on the T & M yesterday or day before - went through Willington

 

 

Thanks for that Witchy, I will send him an Email.

[David Schweizer]

Hi Witchy.

 

Not quite true that there is always a leak, at least not in the accepted sense.. I could be that water is seeping back into the pump inlet through the one way valve which is always part of the system.. So the pressurised water is finding it's way through the pump and back into the feed pipe thus lowering the pressure.

 

If it is a Sureflo type pump the valves are a diaphragm type, a cleaning up of the valve seats will often clear the problem, sometimes the problem will simply go away on it's own.

I agree, One common cause for Shurflo pumps in hard water areas is a build up of limescale on the pressure switch diaphragm. There was intemittent cutting in about every hour on my pump when I bought the boat. This gradually got worse, and I looked everywhere for the leak without success. I eventually replaced the pump and the problem was solved. I then stripped down the old pump and found the limesacale buildup, that was removed and the pump was tested - it was fine. I now have fully operational spare.

Edited November 16, 2008 by David Schweizer