My water pump dun' busted

November 27, 2008 5:43 PM

Something just caused my water pump to flood my storage room. I came into the room, and water was shooting out of a tiny metal valve coming out the main body of the pump. I found a small hose ( maybe 1/8" diameter ) dangling with one side attached to some type of device housed in the power supply. Obviously the other side of that small hose is supposed to connect to that tiny metal valve. So I reconnected the hose and now everything is fine. From what I can gather from the manual I found online, the part of the hose connected to the power supply is part of a pressure regulator. And I am assuming, although I may be wrong, that the regulator caused to small hose to detach from the valve, causing water to come out in order to relieve an extreme amount of pressure. Anyone know what happened????
posted by jasondigitized to home & garden (5 comments total)

Now that I am thinking, I think the hose just came loose on its own.
posted by jasondigitized at 5:53 PM on November 27, 2008

Unless your pump was made by Lucas, I doubt it was designed to have a hose flip off to regulate pressure. Hoses get old and lose elasticity. Wind some Teflon tape, or even duct tape around the male end so the hose fits snugly, at least until you can buy a new length of hose or determine how the pressure regulator really works.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 5:54 PM on November 27, 2008

can you reference the online manual? I'm curious as to the type of pump it is and what it does.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:21 PM on November 27, 2008

You will probably find that the hose has just hardened with age, and has lost its grip. If that were my pump, I'd be replacing the hose, and making sure both ends were fitted with suitable screw-tightened hose clamps. You're lucky it was the side that wasn't inside the guts of the power supply that let go.
posted by flabdablet at 12:38 AM on November 28, 2008

That hose is part of a feedback loop that allows your water pump to be controlled by the pressure in your pipes.

When the pressure in your pipes is at some threshold level, it flips a switch in your power supply and turns off the pump. Various things can cause such a hose to work loose; every time you turn the faucet off, for example, you'll get a sharp spike in the pressure in your pipes, and each such spike pushes hard on the hose. If you develop a water hammer in your pipes, that could knock it off in short order.

Once it works loose, the water pump 'feels' zero pressure in your pipes and pumps for all it's worth, but the only place for it to go when you have all your faucets off is out the tiny 1/8th" hole.
posted by jamjam at 3:32 PM on November 28, 2008