Eau forage?

[Richard Handley]

Our house has a forage water system for watering the garden but it has not worked since we bought the house a few months ago. Some of it is exposed, eg some solenoid valves that lead to hoses in the garden, an electronic control panel (that seems to work) and an air cylinder that is appears only partially connected. There also appears to be a kind of reservoir adjoining/under the basement that may be connected to the drains. It contains smelly water and lots of little flies, both of which invade into the basement regularly and without obvious pattern. Most of the pipework disappears into the walls and so I have not been able to trace the system.
I would like to have a go at fixing it, but have not been able to find any information about how the system should work. Do any of you have any knowledge of such systems? Even a schematic diagram would give me a better starting point.
Alternatively, do you know any companies that specialise in this type of system?

[Allan]

Our house has a forage water system for watering the garden but it has not worked since we bought the house a few months ago. Some of it is exposed, eg some solenoid valves that lead to hoses in the garden, an electronic control panel (that seems to work) and an air cylinder that is appears only partially connected. There also appears to be a kind of reservoir adjoining/under the basement that may be connected to the drains. It contains smelly water and lots of little flies, both of which invade into the basement regularly and without obvious pattern. Most of the pipework disappears into the walls and so I have not been able to trace the system.
I would like to have a go at fixing it, but have not been able to find any information about how the system should work. Do any of you have any knowledge of such systems? Even a schematic diagram would give me a better starting point.
Alternatively, do you know any companies that specialise in this type of system?

I don't know if all systems are the same but our water supply is all from forage and I can describe how ours works.

We have a submersible pump in a borehole, this pumps water up into a pressure vessel which is a large tank. That vessel has a membrane inside that pressurises the water. It also has a pressure switch that cuts out the pump when the pressure in the vessel reaches a predefined upper limit. When the pressure in the tank falls below its predefined lower limit then it starts the pump again. The idea is that we get a fairly consistent water pressure and stop starts of the pump are reduced. The water supply is then a pipe coming out of the pressure vessel.

Pressure vessels usually look like this http://www.pompes-direct.com/surpresseu ... GwodivgFqQ this maybe what you have described as a air tank.

We then split the outlet in two, one side goes to a filter and water softener for the domestic supply, the other half goes to the outside taps and the watering system.

All pretty simple really.

A lot of older houses have changeover systems to allow you to switch between mains and forage water.

In your case the solenoids may connect to sprinklers in the garden

If you pm your email address, I'll send you a diagram.

[russell]

If your pump is above ground and the system hasn't been used for a while it may be that there is air in the pump and it needs priming. Some pumps are sold as "self priming" but in my experience that only works if the water level is not far below the pump.

Russell.