During the day I run the system so that we draw from the tank and the tank then draws fresh water from the supply. So when I (for eg) take a shower or open a tank the pump kicks in.
At night I bypass the system.
But every now and then (at least once a day) the pump will fire up for no reason.
Now some reasons occur to me
Design feature (for reasons I don’t understand)
Fault on the pump (no fault codes are displayed)
Leak in the house.
For the last 5 weeks our useage has been under 200 l per day (I read the meter very regularly, this week we did 174l per day) so if it’s a leak, then it’s not a big one.
But if I make one cup of coffee the pump fires up. So you don’t need to draw a lot of water to get the pump into action.
I’ve checked our toilets for leaks - turned them off as a test. There’s no dripping taps. That the pump starts up with no visible demand for water (appliances running, toilets being flushed etc) suggests to my untechnical brain that it must be the geyser. What else could draw water without anything coming out of tap or down a drain?
There does appear to be a small, steady overflow from the main geyser. Could this be it? I’m told by people who work in the building trade but aren’t actually plumbers that one should allow 2l per day loss through a geyser. Is this so?
Op says the geyser overflows slightly. Probably the pressure release valve. If he is running a pressure pump then it has to be a high pressure geyser…
I think it is getting hot - releasing pressure which then drops the threshold below the pump cut in pressure and pump comes on…
My pump has a setting for output pressure (easily adjusted) but I don’t know what it should be. Also you can tweak the sensitivity and the time it runs on after demand stops, but you have to work out some ratios and the manual doesn’t give much detail. So it’s either for people who know what they are doing, or to stop people fiddling with stuff they don’t understand (or both, and I am not in the first category).
I don’t know whether or not to get the geyser looked at. It makes sense that you must lose some water that way, and current useage doesn’t make it worth the spend. So actually I do know.
I have the same issue
I have learned to live with it, except during the night…installed a timer…
But then nothing is normal about my plumbing system…issue started when I installed a flexible connection between pump and house system. Previous was rigid connection and vibration cracked pressure unit at the outlet
In my experience there will always be tiny leaks somewhere in the system, even if only micro, it all adds up eventually. Obviously the bigger your network of piping and the older your installation, the more micro leaks there will be.
As long as it’s not excessive, then learn to live with it.
No. That is because of expansion of the water when heating.
Rather install a pressure gauge so you van see what the pressure is rather than second guessing the reasons…
It could be as simple as leaking back past the one-way mechanism in the pump itself. In other words it leaks back from the high pressure bladder side into the low pressure tank.
These pressure controlled systems with water are unforgiving if there’s no air in the system. The pressure spikes will be substantial.
That’s why I just bought myself a 27l pressure vessel (with bladder nogal!) to dampen my system (which is still on the drawing board…)
So JoJo are sending a guy to take a look. He thinks the pump is a bit sensitive but says that can be corrected via settings. He will walk me through this.
There is what JoJo call a “buffer tank” on the pump. This needs periodic repressurising. The technician showed me how to remove it. This afternoon I will remove it and take it to a gas station and reinflate.
There is a slow, slight, continuous drop of pressure on the property. He showed me how to check for this. He says it’s very slow, but it is definitely there. This is what other posters here predicted. But he’s shown me a method for checking for it, and now, when I have time, I can turn off stop cocks and see if the pressure drop stops.
The pump’s sensitivity is set to 70%. When the pressure on the output side drops to 70% of the start up pressure it will start up. This is what is happening, the slow drop of pressure is there but slow.
Also the type of pump that I have is what JoJo refer to as a “whiner” (not usually to the customer’s face). The technician was able to run just the pump - it hardly makes a sound. The sound that I hear from it is the impeller.
They have a pump with a different impeller design that they say is much quieter. But it’s going to be about 14 grand.
I told the plumber I wanted a quiet pump. It seems he didn’t check his options in detail. The pump I got is variable speed thus marketed as “quiet”, but it is not the quietest pump in the range. If he’d checked and seen the other model he could have given me a choice. I would have had to pay about 6K more to get the pump with the centrifugal impeller - the very quiet one. Now I have to buy a whole new pump and sell the “whiner” on for what I can get for it.
This was unfair of me, and also a manifestation of not checking properly. The centrifugal pump is only available as a special order with a 14 day lead time. So the plumber got the best JoJo pump he could get given the time line for the job.
