05/05/2010 - 0 COMMENTS
We built the house, it has a well which goes through a whole house carbon filter, then through a water softener. For a couple years we drank the bottled water (5 gallons on a stand) but we cooked and did most other things on the well. We even drank the well water sometimes and it's perfectly fine to drink... but, it's not quite that clear and clean as the bottled.
About 2 years ago we also installed a Kenmore Reverse Osmosis system and got rid of the bottled water machine. Instantly we have super clean / clear water and the ice cubes in the fridge even look clean and clear (moreso than with the straight well water). Nice...
A few months after the RO system was installed, the ice maker basically quit. If you look across a couple pages back you can see where after about 8 months of inaction, I installed a replacement solenoid and it started feeding the ice maker again... to a point.
After that was installed the ice started to fill up and then trailed off to nothing again, but wasn't much after that when the pre and post filters on the RO system needed changed. When I changed them, the icemaker fired back up and worked great for about 6 weeks. Then it started to trail off again.
The next time the filters needed changed it fired back up again. At this point I realized that the ice maker is sensitive to having enough pressure and the RO system loses a little pressure a few weeks into a new set of filters.
Summer is coming and we're going to want a long term solution to this. I ordered an Aquatech 5800 demand delivery pump for about $120usd.
I plugged it in after the RO before the fridge. Plugged it in and wha-lah.. The ice maker starts working again. Perfect!! Well, sort of... The way the pump works, it pumps the line to the fridge up at 60psi and every little squirt of water (to the ice maker or the water dispenser) and the water line jumps and flails around, thumping the walls and making quite a rattle rattle bang bang.
What can I do to dampen the water between the pump and the fridge? It's about $50 + accessory parts for a 2 gallon pressure tank... or we could go hillbilly and make something out of 2" PVC pipe for about 8 bucks + accessory parts.
First up.. The lumber company shipped me 8 of the top base trim 16 footers.. and 12 of the bottom profile. The bottom ones are wrong. Any takers to help pack those back out of the basement? :-) Bummer..
Every part needs to be scrubbed as if it were about to become part of the pipeline to the families water supply... because it is... Build a U out of 3 inches of the pipe + 2 90's.
On the tops we have a connector then a 2" to 0.5" converter followed by a tool free slide the tube right in connector.
The whole thing ends up about 5 feet high. The idea is.. to pump in jolt ridden water source on one side and have calm pressureized water out to the fridge on the other side.
So that the shock doesn't translate into the frame of the house I used 2 grout sponges to buffer it.
Only hook up the inlet side at first. Pump water until it starts to come out the other side. At this point I expect we have the outlet side about full, and the inlet side still primarily a big air bubble. It's debatable what happens once the air bubble side is full of water if this thing still does a good job dampening the jolting action. I suppose small bits of the air could ride out with water and over time the air is out...
Hook up both sides and give it a try. It does in fact dampen the jolting that the pump gives. It seems to be a low tech solution to a bugger of a problem and done at about $40 less than trying the same with a pressure tank. The RO pressure tanks are closer to $80, but I was going to just try a $50 pressure tank designed to help with water heater pressure.
There's a look at the pump and it's rubber mounting.
