How to increase water pressure in home?

[DRH1175]

I have a well. my water pressure is around 40 psi I would like to get it up to 60 psi for a sprinkler system. How do I do this?

[Archerysniper]

You will have to play around with your pressure switch wich should be located by you blue pressure tank there will be two screws one should be the on pressure the other will be the off make sure you shut off the power to the pump when adjusting you will just have to play with it until you get what you want and not have the pump turning on and off constantly, also make sure your pressure tank is still good they have a habit of becoming water logged and you could tell this is the pump constantly runs while you are running water. The other option is putting a pump with a high horse power into the well.

[MuleShack]

If your going to run irrigation, you may need to look at putting a larger pump in anyway?

Or if your original is running all the time it will burn up and you can replace with a larger one?

[Ryan_V]

a standard pump for a house/farm is 1/2 horse. to run a sprinkler system, you need a 1 1/2 horse. I'd get the new pump. if you want to play with what you have, get a different pressure switch. I have a 40/60 and it works well!!

[Tom7227]

sounds like an awful lot of money to spend merely for the convenience of a sprinkler system. If you have to hire it out you'll drop $1200+ according to my experience. You can turn a hose on and off a lot of times for that kind of money.

[jerkbait]

Like said earlier, adust the pressure switch to shut off at the higher pressure and turn on at a higher pressure. Also you want the pressure adjusted so the pump runs and does not kick on and off when the sprinklers are running. The starting and stopping is what will cause the pump to burn up. I think the 1/2 horse will be fine, you just may not be able to run 10 heads at once.

[Ryan_V]

make sure your tank is rated for the pressure you are setting it at. anyone who installs sprinklers will advise not to do it with regular sized pump. even a few heads need more continuous flow than a 1/2 horse will do. that's why you need to 1 1/2. the switch has nothing to do with how much the pump puts out. it only determines what the tank is pressurized to when it shuts the pump off. setting your switch higher will not make the pressure coming from the pump any higher.

[Archerysniper]

Why is it called a pressure switch and why dose it regulate the the pressure in the system then. A bigger pump will recover the demand faster and keep up with the demand. If you had a 1-1/2 hp pump and the pressure switch is set to shut off at 40# that is all you can get out of it unless you adjust the pressure switch to turn off and on at a higher psi.

[DRH1175]

How big of a pressure tank do you need? I have a 20 gallon wouldn't one want something bigger? I am not sure what my pressure is at. The sprinkler guy that came out the other day read 40psi. I have a gauge that I bought that read 60 psi.

[Archerysniper]

Sometimes the gauges by the pressure tank go bad and get stuck in one spot, the pressure tanks are sized by the number of bathrooms or plumbing fixtures in the house the more water that is demanded the bigger pressure tank you want.

[Ryan_V]

Why is it called a pressure switch and why dose it regulate the the pressure in the system then. A bigger pump will recover the demand faster and keep up with the demand. If you had a 1-1/2 hp pump and the pressure switch is set to shut off at 40# that is all you can get out of it unless you adjust the pressure switch to turn off and on at a higher psi.

the pressure switch doesn't give the pressure for the house. it tells the pump when to turn on and off. for example. I have a 40/60 pressure switch on my pressure tank. when the pressure in the tank hits 40, the pump kicks on, when it hits 60, the pump kicks off. the water coming out of the pressure tank that supplies the house will always be about the same. if your pump goes out, the water will stop immediately when the tank is empty, it doesn't slowly fizzle out. all this is of course considering that your pressure tank is in good working order.

[BobT]

One last consideration with regard to the sprinkler system. Having 60psi pressure does not necessarily mean your sprinkler will work any better. Pressure is pressure but volume is in gallons/minute. How much water will your sprinkler system allow to flow at 60psi? How far is the pump from the sprinklers? You may experience line loss and therefore pressure drop due to the distance. Is your pump able to deliver that amount of flow and at that distance? Is your well able to deliver the volume you need?

[Surface Tension]

You need to precharge the psi in air bladder to 2lb less then your cut in pressure. If you have a 40/60 switch then that precharge will be 38psi. That is of coarse if you have a tank rated for that. Water can't compress but the air bladder does and that will give you a fairly constant pressure of your precharge close to the tank. As pointed out, the further you get away from the tank the less that pressure will be.

[FISHINGFARMER]

Alot of good info provided in the post to your question. I had the same question to my well contractor when building 2 new barns on the farm. How can I increase water volume and pressure when needed most for different situations in these barns.

The solution was to drop a constant pressure pump dirrectly into the well. This allows no need for a huge pressure holding tank in the office taking up space. From there we installed a variable rate pressure controller. It will deliver as small as 40psi to nearly 100psi when water quanities are needed. The most important factor in providing pressure and volume to a barn or (home) is the size of line in diameter. If the line diameter isn't large enough you are going to have a up hill battle all the time.

Farmer