Last night I turned on my water and found there was none. At first I thought that a pipe froze. Then I go to the pit where my tank is. It took hours to even get in there since the entry was buried in ice and snow. In that underground pit is my tank with the pressure switch. The instant I looked in there I knew there was a big problem. The pit had over 4 feet of water in it, my bladder tank was sideways more or less floating as the plastic pipes were still attached. The pressure switch electrical part was under water (yet the breaker never blew).
I shut off the power and put a sump pump in there and pumped it out. After it was empty, I put the tank back on it's base, checked all the piping for breaks (none existed), and thoroughly dried out the pressure switch. I turned it back on and it worked again. That's when I noticed a small pinhole leak in the tank blasting against the wall of the pit.
OK, I need a new tank, but it's going to be a few weeks until I can afford one. I took some JB Weld and glued a sheetmetal screw into the hole. I am going to let it dry all day before I turn it back on, and got some bottled water from a neighbor for the day. My question is whether this will hold? I know JB Weld is pretty strong. I scraped all the paint to the bare metal before I applied the JB Weld. I found a thick screw that threaded in tightly, put the JB under the head and tightened it. Then I spread the JB all over the area next to the tank, covering about one inch all the way around the screw.
Has anyone done this?
PS. The bladder is still fine. I drained all the water before I did this patch and used a torch to get it totally dry. I released all the air from the bladder too, not that it was necessary, since the bladder is in the top of the tank, the leak is in the bottom. I have since refilled the tank air in the bladder without any air coming out of the water drain valve, which is still open while the JB dries.
Jim