So this situation remains. I can tweak the operating pressure for the pump but it’s just changing the timing. Sooner or later the pump is going to run for no obvious reason.
Meanwhile the overflow from the geyser drips constantly. It overflows into a gutter, and any time of day I can put my hand below the down pipe & there’s a slow drip. Always cold, but the water travels some distance and does so slowly.
The water meter isn’t showing anything alarming. In fact water use is down this week (I read the meter weekly) at 104 liters a day.
But maybe that should be 80 or 90. But either way, as long as we come in at less than 200 a day we are under the City’s free allocation of 6kl per month and so it costs me nothing. So how much should I spend?
Pump is set to supply at 3.8. Looks like municipal pressure is about 4.2.
I ran my jojo pump off a sonoff smart switch. it’s set for certain times of the day to top up my solar geyser and I can switch pump on anytime via alexa.
the pump (grundfos) also used to run on & off at first till I installed the smart switch. plumbers could’nt figure it out - pump running - no leaks?? hence the smart switch.
my over flow from the solar geyser goes straight back into the jojo tanks so there’s no significant water wastage. just trying to save on asscum juice.
So today I found that the valve thing in the outbuilding loo was full of grit. I stripped it down, blew the grit out, washed the parts just to be sure. The effects of this grit seem to have been two fold to my uneducated eye & brain.
Cistern taking forever to fill which keeps the pump running. I am certain of this.
It seems to me that sometimes the valve thing would not close properly and would keep on letting water pass, but (see (1)) very slowly.
Which was not the problem, or not the only problem. 23:30 last night the pump started running for no obvious reason.
Maybe the pump turns over every now as some sort of preventitive maintenance strategy. Or maybe there’s a gradual loss of pressure and this is a natural thing and usually the pressure from the municipality would correct for this.
The one-way check valve inside the pump itself might not be 100% tight either. If the pump has to run for a couple seconds a few times a day to compensate for that, it’s probably acceptable
