okay my interest in this product is peaked. my house has 30 water outlets, faucets,toilets, spigots etc along with an inground sprinkling system. so I worry that, if I go with to small a tank, every time the toilet flushes, someone washes hands, rinse a dish etc that the system is still cycling on and off because of the small tank size. Am I correct? also I should go with the stainless model of valve so it wouldn't leak in my basement? my pump is 1 1/2 hp at 20 gpm. thanks for any input you can give me.
A funny thing about a CSV is, the more water a system uses, the smaller the tank can be. I can’t argue with someone who only uses 50 gallons per day when they say a tank that holds 25 gallons (80 gallon actual size) will only cycle the pump twice a day. But when you have a sprinkler system, garden hoses, multiple sinks, toilets, showers, appliances, etc, the small tank is all you need.
See this graphic;
http://www.cyclestopvalves.com/simple/home.phpThe Cycle Stop Valve system is on the top. A conventional tank system is on the bottom. If you turn on a sprinkler and let it run for hours, the pump runs constantly for hours as well. During this time, if you flush a toilet, take a shower, or use any other water, the pump is already running and the CSV just opens up a little to give you enough extra for the added shower. When you turn off the shower or the toilets fill and shut off, the CSV just resets to the amount of water needed to run the sprinkler.
The same thing happens when you turn on a shower. As long as the shower is on, the pump is also on, so even 40/11 toilets flushes don’t add a single extra cycle to the pump. In a house where there are multiple people, and/or multiple systems using water, the pump will be running a lot of the time, which is a good thing. As long as somebody, or something, somewhere in or around the house is using water, the pump is already running. Anything else turned on just gets the extra water it needs, without the pump having to cycle one extra time.
It just takes a little change of old habits, but you will learn you can run your sprinklers or any other long term use of water during peak water use times for the house. If you run your sprinklers from 6PM to 8PM, the pump will already be running when most showers, toilets, washing machines, etc, are being used. In that way you are almost getting free water for the house, as the pump is already running, and it only cost a penny more to run the shower at the same time. With a 20 GPM pump, you just don’t want to run more than about 15 GPM worth of sprinklers at a time, so you have some extra flow left for the house when needed.
If you noticed the conventional pump system at the bottom of the graphic, it is just cycling on and off continually no matter where or how much water is being used. With a conventional tank system, you need to always run 20 GPM worth of sprinklers with a 20 GPM pump to keep it from cycling itself to death. So you have to run the sprinklers from 2AM to 5AM, because there isn’t any water left for showers or anything. It is hard to always run exactly 20 GPM worth of sprinklers. Hoses and small zones are a pump killer, and watering at night may not be the best thing for the vegetation.
The Cycle Stop Valve just lets you use as much or as little water as you want without cycling the pump. Water just goes from the pump, right past the tank, straight to the sprinklers, showers, wherever, because the CSV gives only the exact amount of water needed. There is no extra water being produced to even go into the tank. The CSV closes down to a minimum of 1 GPM when all the water use has finally been turned off. Then this 1 GPM has no place left to go except the pressure tank. The pressure tank is then topped off at the 1 GPM rate until the pressure switch shut off point is reached and the pump shuts off.
The CSV creates a mechanical timer by refilling the pressure tank at only 1 GPM. A tank that holds 1 gallon of water above the set point of the CSV, will make the pump run for 1 more minute after all the faucets have been turned off. This means if you flush a toilet, a CSV system with a 1 gallon draw tank will have to start for a 1.6 gallon flusher. But it usually takes about 30 seconds for the toilet to fill and shut off, then the “mechanical timer” will make the pump run for another minute before shutting off. So during this minute and a half, if someone starts a shower, runs a sink, or flushes another toilet elsewhere in the house, the pump doesn’t’ shut off between water uses.
We have found that usually when someone in the house is up and using water, everybody in the house is up and using water. They may not be using water at exactly the same time, but within a minute or so of the last water use. So with the CSV system, the pump may run continuously from 6AM to 7:30AM, and again from 6PM to 9PM. This is much better for the pump than cycling on and off multiple times. And with the CSV system the pressure will remain at a constant 50 PSI throughout the house during this time instead of annoyingly cycling up and down continuously between 40 and 60 PSI.
With the CSV and a small tank, about the only way you can make the pump cycle with toilets, is to flush, wait 2 minutes and flush again, flush, wait 2 minutes and flush again, and continue. Even then the pump will only be cycling about every 3 minutes which is only 20 times per hour. And you would have to stand there and flush every three minutes for an hour to make that happen. If you flush the toilet 20 times in a row as soon as it fills up again, the pump only cycles once for those 20 flushes.
Again most flushes happen within a minute of using water somewhere else, and the CSV system makes sure the pump doesn’t have to cycle and extra time. But even if you stood there and flushed every three minutes all day long, those 20 cycles per hour would still be less harmful for the pump than the cycling that happens with a conventional tank system in just a few hours of running a mismatched sprinkler system.
Sorry for the long post. The CSV is a very simple product with a complicated explanation. I have spent over 20 years and built an entire web page trying to make the explanation easier. I keep thinking I am going to find the right words to make it easy to understand. As you can tell from this latest attempt, it isn’t easy.
Maybe I should have just said, as I have thousands of times, try it, I guarantee you’ll like it, or your money back. And hope 20+ years of never having to give a single person their money back speaks for itself.
Thanks
Cary
