I have this tank in my basement that I can't figure out what it is for. Possibly a water softener, or filter. It's starting to leak (probably from rust), but I don't know what it is to replace! Can you identify? It's from the early 80's probably.
I'd post the picture here but that's a usenet no-no.
No this isn't a spam/junk/send me money link.
Weird. No maintenance friendly fixtures. Too big to be a (water) pressure vessel. The pipe with a c*ck valve going to the tank bottom will likely be the water IN pipe. Why not reconnect the pipes to bypass the tank and see what happens. It a lot easier and better to do this now before that leak becomes a real problem.
It looks like an old pressure tank from a previous pump and tank installation. It looks much like the tank my parents had with a piston pump for their well in the 1950s. Probably when they changed over they decided to keep it in the system to hold extra water, or to maybe use it as a sand trap considering you found something inside the tank. It sounds redundant, and if it is that old, with no maintenance, it probably doesn't filter, clean or catch sand anymore. I would remove it.
My first (and only) GUESS would be that it is an ancient pressure tank left over from years ago. Why they didn't bypass and remove it when the new pressure tank was installed I have no clue, but I would bet that you could just bypass it and everything would work fine.
Actually, I am sure that my parents had one of these in their cellar about a zillion years ago and it remained there, although not connected, even after they got city water.
Don
*snip*
Not likely to apply here, but back before getting fully involved in digital photography, I used a tank like this as a settling tank for sand particles. It only served my darkroom - the sand wasn't a problem elsewhere in the house.
According to PaPaPeng :
On the contrary - before bladder-style tanks, seeing pressure tanks this size isn't at all unusual.
Given the plumbing arrangement, I'll bet there used to be a pump there.
Red sandy stuff inside? Could this be an old fashioned permanganate tank used for removing dissolved iron? If the stuff hasn't been replenished in _years_, it's not doing anything.
Is one of those lines direct from the pump?
I'd drain and bypass the thing, and see what happens too.
Yes, the bottom line comes directly from the pump outside.
Looks like a sediment trap to me.
The water on the floor isn't necessarily a leak: it could be condensation.
"Dukester" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...
I'm going to join those who mentioned permanganate tank to remove sediments and "treat" extremely hard water. If it's what my sister had on their farm, which looked a lot like it, it was supposed to be backwashed every once in awhile, almost like a pool's sand filter. The original well was only ab out 35' deep, hand dug and stoned (stones cemented on sides to keep it from falling in). When it rained every faucet strainer in the house would fill up and the amount of "rust" that poured out of it when they cleaned it was amazing. I don't recall the exact process, but there were two levers to flip to back-wash it, and the backwash actually just flushed out onto the floor. I seem to recall some sort of a "block" of something they'd stick into it too, but no ideas what it was now. I was only a teen back then. About a year or so after buying the farm, they had a real well dug, and thought they might be finding out why the dug well since at a hundred feet they still hadn't hit water. Then at 120' they ran into a river - no more water problems! Well, except a terrible stink from the gasses in it! . The old well was barely enough for 25 head but the new well supported the family, inlaws, 6 kids, and 200+ head of dairy cattle!
Just my two cents & possibly inaccrate memories,
Pop
If it is a trap, does one clean it out somehow? How?
I don't know if it needs to be cleaned out or not - presumably *eventually* it would need it, but I have no idea how often.
I see what appears to maybe be a drain plug near the bottom left in your first photo.
This is Turtle.
I have listen to all the post here and i just must be missing something here. That's got to be a Pump Tank.
That is a pump tank used on water wells to acculate a volume of water with just a air bubble the water well will presurize it and the pressure switch must be made into the pump outside to cut it off when you get your water pressure up high enough. Now it does have a 3" cap to maybe install a blatter to keep the air bubble in the top. It will work with or without. Now if your doing away with it , I need one on my camp right now.
TURTLE
According to TURTLE :
That was everybody else's first guess, but the fact that it does have a 3" cap, and is, according to him, filled with a reddish sandlike substance, is suggestive that it's an old style permanganate[1] iron filter. These days they look somewhat like smallish single-tank water softeners.
There were all sorts of old equipment it _could_ have been, like a non-bladder style pressure tank or aerator, but the reddish stuff seems pretty definitive.
[1] Potassium permanganate is purple. But in poor light after absorbing years worth of iron, I'll accept red ;-)
My guess would be a filter of some type. A pressure tank normally has a single connection, while your tank has an inlet and outlet (not sure which is which). So, water is passing "through" the tank, which indicates a filter to me.
In any case, whether it's a filter or water softener of some type, if it's really 20+ years old I doubt it's doing much of anything. I'd just remove it completely.
If you're concerned about water quality, you could replace it with a whole house water filter. I have one on our well to keep rust and sediment out of the house lines. It works well, but it's a maintenance issue.
Anthony
Looks like a storage tank for a tankless water heater in a commercial building. However, there are no gas lines, no electrical lines, and no other visible openings to change a filter.
It's a filter . The back flow was probably removed during the new installation
1.66 cents (euros)Vlad
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