Old water system

HowardLong · June 14

Hi, I found this in an old apartment basement. Any idea what it was? I assume it's some kind of pressure system for potable water.

HowardLong · June 14

I'll try to get better pictures. I wasn't in the mood with all the spiders at the time.

Jamie Hall · June 14

It may be a vertical hydropneumatic tank Teh contraption at the boom in the middle picture may be a single pisting, double acting water pump. The other motorized widget may be an air compressor. Any controls or wiring survive?

hot_rod · June 14

A pic of the label on the green part.

Looks like maybe an old Fairbanks Morse or Deming piston or plunger well pump?

mattmia2 · June 14

looks like a compression style well tank. those controls look like old weight and bellows style pressure controls.

EBEBRATT-Ed · June 14

How tall is the apartment building? I suspect and air compression tank to boost the city water pressure.

Steamhead · June 14

Where is this building located?

Jamie Hall · June 14

Heavens. There were enough typos in my post up there… I guess people figured out what I meant, though. Dang autocorrect.

HowardLong · June 17

Here is more pics. Plus the old boiler

mattmia2 · June 17

i assume that arco had an oil or gas burner on it through the ash pit?

looks like a shallow well pump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOrAo8f6SUo

https://www.ebay.com/itm/147050040328

https://daytonhistory.pastperfectonline.com/photo/A691F55E-4A1F-48A1-BD6C-991855024522

Jamie Hall · June 17

Not a jet pump. Double acting piston pump. Nice big flywheel on there to even it out, and the small pulse absorbing chamber (which wasn't supposed to waterlog and usually did).

They worked just fine. The one like it we had at Cedric's home worked well from about 1915, when it was installed, to 1960, when a well was drilled and a deep well submersible installed. At first it was gasoline powered (one lung, make and break engine) and later, in the '30s, electrified and made automatic!

They don't give all that much flow, but they can handle quite high pressures if need be. Often uSed with overhead tank storage (ours was) or BIG hydropneumatic tanks. (ours, installed in the '40s, was 2,000 gallons0.

mattmia2 · June 17

did i say it was a jet pump? or did the video? i didn't really listen to the audio. it was meant for a well where atmospheric pressure could lift the water.

mattmia2 · June 17

that pressure control is a lot like this control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgvVZNkEeXc

HowardLong · June 18

Yeah, that boiler was set up for gas at some point. But it looks like they left the old mechanical diaphragm control on it. Did that control a damper when it was a Coal Fired boiler?

I'll have to get pictures of another boiler at a different address that is also defunct. But it is a coal burner and it has a big mechanical auger system that's still full of coal

HowardLong · June 18

@mattmia2 So that means there used to be a well under the building? This is in the center of the basement.

mattmia2 · June 18

that bellows device kind of looks like an early relief valve because I can't really see where an arm and weight to operate the dampers would connect to it.

the well may have been below the basement floor, I have seen a lot of well heads in basement floors with some sort of a wood cover over them. sometimes it is just a hollow and wooden sounding spot in the floor. It also may have been outside and came in through the basement wall. Where does the pipe in to the pump look like it came from? The basement floor likely was originally dirt and probably got covered with concrete sometime around the 50's

Steamhead · June 18

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1898788#Comment_1898788

Either under the building or off to the side.

What heats the building now?

Jamie Hall · June 18

Or it could have been tapping a spring — that's what ours did. They are capable of about 25 feet of lift once they're primed. Those probably used leather seals, so as long as you used them moderately regularly they'd stay primed. Most of the time…

HowardLong · June 18

@Steamhead unfortunately all electric. 🥲

HowardLong · June 18

As long as I'm here, there's an old three-story building that appears to have the original Kewanee boiler. And it used to be run as a steam boiler because all the radiators have traps but they converted it to water at some point. Would that be for some efficiency? Was there any other reason that you would do that besides a failed boiler?

Steamhead · June 18

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1898810#Comment_1898810

Because someone doesn't understand steam and was good at taking people's money.

Kickstand55 · June 26

The old stuff worked back in the day because most knew how to work on those systems except of course for the Knuckle Heads. They were like that.

Intplm. · June 27

That is a shallow well piston pump. It was the first electric type-powered pump, just one generation from the hand pump in the backyard.

It had cup leathers encased in a brass cylinder that drew water up from a shallow well. The galvanized tank had to be emptied occasionally to add an air cushion until, in later years, a device called an air charger could be installed between the piston pump and the tank's water/air line. The pump could only make forty psi. (This also helped with the beginnings of the 20/40 pressure switch.)

joea99 · June 29

Just passing through, but noticed there may be a lot of asbestos in the area.

Old water system

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