Fixing up old cars and old houses are so much the same. When you buy an older property, or an older car, you inherit many things that the Previous Owner did either completely wrong or at best half-assed. In the case of my property it was combination of both. This is long and probably boring so you were forewarned…
Dave Wyrwas our esteemed Eliminator registrar was staying with us following the Cypress CA CCOA event. On Monday morning my wife said the dreaded words: we have no water. In the desert this leads to what is called, water panic.
We have a low production well meaning it can only produce about three gallons of water per minute. So you have to have a tank, called a cistern, to collect the water, and we have a big one at 2500 gallons. The water from the cistern is fed to a pump that pushes the water into a pressurized tank that supplies the house. Since we don’t usually get hard freezes here all of this is right out in the open, under the blazing sun. The local pack rats find this mess an intriguing place to hang out and they place pieces of cactus spines all over to keep the coyotes and foxes away. It makes servicing this stuff a veritable mine field of cactus spines. Fun stuff. Dave is still probably trying to remove a few.
On inspection we discovered the pump was running continuously, and that there was a crack in the plastic fitting at the intake of the pump. IT appeared that the pump was sucking in air instead of water. It looked like an easy fix. There was no union in the pipe so it had to be cut in order to replace the fitting. After cutting the pipe I discovered that it had only been partially threaded into the pump and that most of the threads were filled with rust. I tried to find a 1 1/4" tap to no avail so I was left to try to clean the threads with a pick. I had little faith that a new plastic fitting would seal so I installed a galvanized pipe and coupler that I could tighten and seal with plumbers putty. This would be followed by a new plastic adapter followed by a short piece of plastic pipe and a plastic union, more pipe and a coupler to the existing pipe. The existing pipe was sunburned and oxidized requiring it to be sanded down to the original outside diameter. Whew. All that was left to do was to bleed the air out of the system and fire it up.
Only bleeding the system from every imaginable location did nothing. A little research and a few phone calls resulted in a possible diagnosis of a possible failed impeller. We disassembled the pump and discovered that the impeller had indeed failed, separating from the shaft and breaking into many small pieces. By this time it was almost four PM, but with a stroke of luck a rebuild kit for my pump was not only in stock, an employee was coming our direction and would meet us behind a Fire House subs store for the hand off. After a full day of 110 degree plus heat that would force us to stop to cool off occasionally, things were looking up. Returning home, Dave and I discovered that the kit did not precisely match my pump. A combination of old an new parts would have to work. We were drinking bottled water and thinking about the benefits of flush toilets.
We reinstalled the pump, but the unions did not want to seal. As it turns out the piping to an from the pump no longer wanted to line up putting every joint under stress. After some persuasion from the largest crescent wrench imaginable we got the leaks down to gently weeping status, and we bled the system. Pump on, the pressure began to rise and things were looking good, or so we thought. The pressure would rise to between 40 and 45 PSI, but not high enough to trigger the 50 PSI shut off. No amount of bleeding would fix this, and we were puzzled. At least we had water. For a while.
Tuesday arrived and it was time for Dave to leave. (Thanks Dave, you helped me retain what has to pass for my sanity!) I got out at 6 AM and the leaks had gotten worse. After some effort, the leaks seemed to be more or less in check and it looked like things might be good until cooler weather arrived and the entire system could be reworked. The only thing left to do was to adjust the cut out pressure low enough for the pump to shut off. According to the instructions all that required was three turns counter clockwise of the adjustment nut and it would shut off at 40PSI. So I made the adjustment. The only way to test was to wait for the pressure to drop the pump to kick back on and then see what happened. To make this go faster, I started running a garden hose to drop the pressure. I never could seem to get the shut off pressure set low enough.
What I did not realize was the the pump was not moving water. Since there was no water moving the pump motor was getting very hot. When the motor did finally shut off, it wasn’t because the pressure was set right. The motor, actually the entire cast iron pump, was so hot you could not touch it. It appeared the thermal protection had shut the motor down. I would need to wait for it cool off before testing could commence, only it was in direct sun, over 110 degrees, and not cooling off much at all. At least we had some pressure in the tank. By 9PM it still had not cooled off enough to restart if it ever would.
Wednesday morning, up at 5:30 this time and the pump was cool to the touch but it would not turn on. Crapola. I started checking the motor for a reset button. I removed the wiring cover and discovered that it was wired internally for 230 volts but only being powered on one leg with 115 volts. Not good, but it had been running like this for many years… I rewired it for 230 volts in the hope that it might some how help, but no love was to be had. I pulled the entire pump assembly and disassembled the rear housing for the motor and checked the thermal breaker. It now showed continuity so the motor should have run. At 8AM I was at a Phoenix motor and pump repair shop when they opened.
They hooked up the motor and of course, it was now running. But there were a few issues. The motor on my 1 HP pump was just 3/4 horse. And it was a switch-less pool pump motor that didn’t make as much startup torque as the switched variety that I should have had. I decided to spring for a new, correct, 1HP motor and had them do the swap. At least now I would have a good motor wired correctly and with some luck rejoin the world of indoor plumbing. By the time I drove back to my house the sun was high in the sky,but a cool spell would bring temps down to just 107, so much nicer than 117.
The previous wiring jobs had used two conductor plus ground wiring, meaning there were back (hot), white (neutral), and bare copper (ground) leads. This is correct for 115 volts, but should have included an extra hot red wire for 230 volts. While it will work to use both white and black as hot leads, it is very dangerous as white is usually not hot. So I rewired everything with proper three conductor wire. After carefully checking my work I powered everything up and the pump motor fired right up.
All that was left to do was to connect the unions. When I opened up the water valves the plastic union was once again leaking, just a little tighter should do the trick… Or so I thought as the plastic cracked and the union snapped in two. While replacing the union might have been an easy task, I was now short on pipe to attach it to. Another run to Home Depot, my fifth in three days, would bring home an assortment of plastic pipe parts. Once again I would have to sand down the existing pipe to make the new fittings fit. Since it was all apart, this seemed like a good time to correctly align the pipes with the pump to relieve the stress on the joints.
By about 4:30 PM everything was glued, threaded, sealed, and set. One good thing about really high temps is that pipe glue sets incredibly fast. The water was back on at 5 and there were no leaks and the pump came right up to the new 40PSI shut off. After a little more testing I bumped the pressure back to the correct 50PSI and called it a day. A shower, even a hot shower after three days in sweltering heat, is pretty nice.
I am not feeling sorry for myself. Over my shoulder, as I was doing all this, I could see the growing plume of smoke from a wild fire raging in the forest to the north. It has already burned 30 square miles. Now those folks have a real problem. If there is a lesson in this it is that a bad water pump, whether on your Cougar or you house is really not a big deal, it is just part of the adventure called life.