On Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 9:44:24 PM UTC-4, rdoc wrote:
Hello,

We are on a small farm and have horrible water that we don't drink. It
buggers and clogs plumbing something terrible.

A couple of years ago, we decided to go the fiberglass pressure tank route
as we got tired of rusting issues. The local well and pump guy came out and,
despite my reservations, installed one that has a vent gizmo on top instead
of my usual draining every few months after waterlogging. My concern was it
would plug up... after about 2 months, it did. He then added another gizmo
in front of the tank that is the device in question:

it is about 10 inches long, has what looks like a tire valve sticking up
from it and is supposed to suck a little air into the tank every time it
runs... and it does that well (never have waterlogged since). My concern
with this item was that it has, according to him, a 3/8 orifice inside that
hurt my flow very badly. Now that this thing has had time to gunk up a bit
(everything always does) the flow is now almost unacceptable. Relations with
this guy deteriorated long ago and I'm about to scream uncle and tackle
things myself as I always used to do before him.

What is this thing called?
Can it be taken apart to clean?
He mentioned that there was another version with a larger diameter innard...
I'm wondering about swapping it since I need to do something anyhow... does
it allow more air proportionally? I do not like the idea of even more air in
my tank as I wish there were more drawdown than there is now.

Does anyone know anything about this gizmo?




thanks

This seems backwards. With a fiberglass tank that is a few years old,
it should have a bladder so that no periodic addition of air is needed,
ie it doesn't get water logged because the air is trapped inside the
bladder and remains constant. And with an older type of tank without
an air bladder, it should have an automatic air volume control that
maintains the correct air volume, so once again, no manual addition of
air is necessary. Further what doesn't make sense is that neither of
those should affect the water flow rate, unless it's by them not working
at all, the tank gets water logged and the pump can't keep up with the
water flow without the tank water assisting. The air volume control for
the older tanks was mounted on the side of the tank and reacted to the
air level. If there was too much water, not enough air, it would allow
the pump to suck in a little bit of air when it runs, increasing the air
in the tank.