Been reading about flushing the tank to reduce sediment concentration. We are on really hard well-water. We have a salt softener, but it is a little hammer on a big lump of Calcium.

The top water trays are already showing crusty bits and we have only had the thing running barely a week.

I drained the tank by removing the overflow fitting. I thought I am thinking a Tee cut into the pump delivery line and a small restriction and hose to the overflow outlet.

That will mean constant water waste, but we can live with that if it makes the swamp last longer.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Dave

It happens that Dave, I can't do that formulated :
Been reading about flushing the tank to reduce sediment concentration. We are
on really hard well-water. We have a salt softener, but it is a little hammer
on a big lump of Calcium.

The top water trays are already showing crusty bits and we have only had the
thing running barely a week.

I drained the tank by removing the overflow fitting. I thought I am thinking
a Tee cut into the pump delivery line and a small restriction and hose to the
overflow outlet.

That will mean constant water waste, but we can live with that if it makes
the swamp last longer.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Dave

In my experience Swamp coolers always waste a little water so that the
water does not keep getting more and more concentration of salts.

--
John G Sydney.

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 14:37:44 -0700 (PDT), "Dave, I can't do that"
wrote:

Been reading about flushing the tank to reduce sediment concentration. We are on really hard well-water. We have a salt softener, but it is a little hammer on a big lump of Calcium.

The top water trays are already showing crusty bits and we have only had the thing running barely a week.

I drained the tank by removing the overflow fitting. I thought I am thinking a Tee cut into the pump delivery line and a small restriction and hose to the overflow outlet.

That will mean constant water waste, but we can live with that if it makes the swamp last longer.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Dave

Thats exactly what you need. I use a similar arraingement to fill a
water bowl for the cats and sprits a little bit of water in one corner
of the garden for thirsty type plants. I simply tie a knot in the
black plastic "bleed line" Now that being said...if your water is
hard...cringe..you are going to have some long term issues with
"crust", unless you have a good water softener

http://blog.watertech.com/swamp-cool...oftened-water/

http://www.ehow.com/how_8516591_soft...e-coolers.html

Etc etc

Gunner

On Saturday, July 4, 2015 at 4:55:55 PM UTC-7, Gunner Asch wrote:

Thanks Gunner, I will proceed with the bleed off today. I wasn't aware that the salt softener just exchanged salts. Probably should have thought about it, but the softener was here when we bought the place, so just kept adding salt.

Being a log-term kinda soul, I'll look into the filter option in the second link. We have two-stage filtering, 10u and 1u after the softener, so not sure just how fine we need to go, but can get a small one just for the swamp as the salt must be what's crusting up in the top trays.

Dave

Just thinking more about this, a more simple way would be to use the internal part of the overflow tube.

Mark where the water level is when the swamp and pump has stopped and the float valve has shut off. That's the High water level.

Run the thing and let it stabilize the water level, say after 30-minutes on a hot day. Mark that level which will be the Low water level.

Unscrew the inside piece of the overflow tube and drill 1/16" hole somewhere between Low and High and screw it back into the overflow fitting. That will bleed off water after shut off so it will only happen when the pump is not running. Right now I am pumping about 3-gallons per hour out the Tee and that's using just a 1/16" diameter hole at pump pressure though.

I guess the only down side to the hole in the overflow is that if the swamp is running for all of Summer. Here, it is turned off around 8:30pm as outside temps generally drop to around low 80s by then

Thoughts?

On Mon, 6 Jul 2015 11:37:48 -0700 (PDT), "Dave, I can't do that"
wrote:

Just thinking more about this, a more simple way would be to use the internal part of the overflow tube.

Mark where the water level is when the swamp and pump has stopped and the float valve has shut off. That's the High water level.

Run the thing and let it stabilize the water level, say after 30-minutes on a hot day. Mark that level which will be the Low water level.

Unscrew the inside piece of the overflow tube and drill 1/16" hole somewhere between Low and High and screw it back into the overflow fitting. That will bleed off water after shut off so it will only happen when the pump is not running. Right now I am pumping about 3-gallons per hour out the Tee and that's using just a 1/16" diameter hole at pump pressure though.

I guess the only down side to the hole in the overflow is that if the swamp is running for all of Summer. Here, it is turned off around 8:30pm as outside temps generally drop to around low 80s by then

Thoughts?

"I cant do that Dave"

Chuckle..my swamp cooler runs just about 24/7 from June -September or
even into October.

Gunner