Recently, we have had two water projects to do. One was the pressure tank in the well house. The other was the dishwasher.
Last week I came home from Scouts, and Meagan told me that there was no water in the house. I went out to the well house and found a scene that looked a lot like this (after we shut off the pumps):
The exit fitting from the pump was blown out of the pump housing. Easy enough to fix. it was about 9 pm, so I had enough time to run down to Lowe’s and get parts to fix it, and I did that night. We had water again, so that was cool.
The next day things were good, until later that night, when sitting at my desk I heard a bang. Shortly after, Jarek told me that there was no water in the bathroom. I went back out to the pump house and found this:
It had failed again, the same way. Further diagnosis indicated that the pressure tank was failed, as it was not having any pressure. The pressure gauge on top of the pump had also failed. Since it never built pressure, the pump never shut off, causing heat to build up and eventually deform the PVC pipe to the point where it could blow out of the fitting.
Off to the store again to get parts, I set to work on installing a new pressure tank and hoping that the pump was still ok, as it was rather expensive to replace the pump as well.
Evan is helping me chamfer some pipes prior to gluing them up.
The system is coming along nicely, but I ran out of parts to fully get the water filtration system connected. I was able to get the bypass loop complete and restore water to the house. Off to Lowe’s once more for the rest of the parts.
Garrett went with Jarek and I. Jarek wanted to get some seeds for a gardening project of his own. Garrett got to help the checkout lady, Susan, with scanning them. He thought that was the best!
Back at the house with everything hooked up! We had a noticeable increase in water quality after putting the filter system in use.
About a week later, the dishwasher threw an error code. As you might imagine, this ranks right up there with having no water in a large family. The seven of us make just a few dishes every meal, and that becomes a problem if the dishwasher is down.
I had lots of helpers on the first day (more on that later) of diagnosis. I showed the kids the guts of the dishwasher and how to diagnose it.
I ordered a new valve, which was the most likely cause of this (IE – inlet error) failure and put it on. However, the problem still persisted. I ordered another two valves, and the next day I put the one on that came today – one is still in transit as of this writing.
However, the problem still persisted. I took the system apart again and found water in the black tube (visible above), which meant that some water was getting through, but not enough apparently.
I ended up taking the dishwasher out, turning it around, and hooking it back up so I could test. The slow trickle above was with the ‘new’ valve on. I ended up taking that valve off and putting the old valve back on, and got a much better flow rate.
I cleaned out the plastic manifold, and put everything back together, and it worked! I’m not sure what the actual problem was, but there was some obstruction somewhere that was preventing the water from filling up like it was supposed to.
Jarek helps out by reinstalling the kickplate on the dishwasher after I put it back in the cabinets.
Garrett and Randal loved playing with my sockets – they were entertained for the whole time I was working on the dishwasher today.
“Look at me mama. I tightening someting with a tool mama.”