Considerations When Choosing A Hose To Help Prime A Pump
If you use a pump to supply drinking water to your house or to supply water to your garden, you may occasionally have the need to prime the pump. A pump can get air in the line due to changes in the water table and other factors. To get the pump working again, you will need to prime it. An often overlooked factor when priming a pump is the type of hose you use for the procedure.
What Is Priming?
Priming basically involves forcing enough water into the pump and the intake line to displace the air in the line. This can be difficult to do if you don't have water in your home due to the pump being out of commission. Often, the solution is to hook a hose up to a building that has water.
Clean Hose
If you simply take a hose from your garden and use it to pump water into your drinking water supply, you can introduce contaminants into your water supply. Algae, germs, insects, and other contaminants can accumulate in a hose, so when you use your hose to prime your pump, you should at the very least thoroughly clean your hose with bleach if not use a brand-new hose for priming.
Lead Hose
Some garden hoses can contain lead. These should be labeled. When you buy a hose, you may not think about whether it contains lead, but lead is only a problem if there is a risk of you consuming the water that comes from your hose. Even if you are only using your hose to push a little bit of water into your pump, you still do not want to introduce lead into your drinking system. Unless you are confident that a hose is safe to drink from, you should not use it to prime a pump that supplies drinking water to your home.
Garden Pump
If you are using your pump to supply water to your garden, it is not so much of a concern if your hose is clean. A garden pump typically will not draw water from a drinkable well, and it won't matter if you introduce contaminants into the pump.
When your pump loses its prime, and you no longer have water to your house, it is easy to get in a hurry to get your pump working again. You should not, however, forget to make sure that you have a clean hose to prime your pump with. For more information, contact Washington Pump & Drilling or a similar company.