Foot Valve

I had big plans for Saturday the 12^th of April. I was going to move the cows to the Stump Farm and then start working on a long list of spring projects.

Moving the cows went off pretty much without a hitch. The new calves who hadn’t been to the stump farm before stayed with the rest of the herd and they all moved together. Because they don’t know the way and they are usually difficult to herd, the new calves can sometimes cause problems if they get separated and lose sight of their mothers. There was some minor damage to a fence that took less than a minute to fix and one of my favorite trilliums along the trail through the woods got stomped. But other than that, it was as smooth and easy as I could have imagined.

Then I decided that I had better check the pump. The Stump Farm well house isn’t heated so I always take the pump out over the winter so it won’t be damaged by freezing weather or stolen. I had installed it the previous Saturday and it took a prime and pumped water. I had a little more trouble than usual getting it primed that day so, even though there was plenty of water in the tanks, I thought I had better check it. It had lost its prime.

Generally problems with the cow water pump are fairly simple but they eat up a lot of time, sometimes days. Often a pump will just lose its prime so all you need to do is re-prime it and you are ready to go again. Of all the possible problems, this is probably the easiest to fix so that is where I started. I dumped about a gallon of water into the pump’s priming port. All of the water drained away when it should have, after a few burps, stayed full to the top of the priming port.

This meant that there was most likely a problem with the foot valve. The foot valve is essentially a check valve at the bottom of the pump suction line. A spring holds tension against the valve disk to keep it closed. The spring is aided by the weight of the water in the suction line above the valve disk. This prevents water from running out of the suction line and allows the pump to keep its prime. When the pump is turned on, the suction overcomes the spring tension and the weight of the water in the suction line and the valve opens, allowing water to flow from the well and into and through the pump. Obviously, if there is a problem with the foot valve, the water in the suction line will drain out and the pump will lose its prime.

I unscrewed the suction line, a 20 foot length of black plastic pipe, from the pump and pulled it from the well. The foot valve and fitting by which it was attached to the suction line looked bad. The whole end of the suction line was covered with rusty mud and the fitting attaching the foot valve to the suction line had a thick crust of rust that disintegrated when I touched it.

I cleaned everything up as best I could, flushing water backwards through the foot valve in case some debris was stuck between the valve disk and seat. Then I did a leak check by pouring water down the upper end of the suction line and lifting that end into the air, forcing all of the water in the line down to the foot valve end. If the foot valve was functioning properly, no water should get past it.

I immediately saw that there was a leak in the fitting that attached the foot valve to the suction line. This fitting was galvanized which should have made it corrosion resistant. I had put it in only about 6 years before, but evidently 6 years sitting in our acidic water was too much and it had rusted to the point of leaking. I pulled the foot valve off and did a separate check of it. With the 20 foot suction line no longer attached, this was much simpler. All I had to do was pour a little water, probably about an eighth of a cup, on the top side of the valve. It also leaked.

So I needed to replace the foot valve and the fitting that attached the foot valve to the suction line. I had another foot valve of the right size that didn’t leak but I couldn’t find the right size fitting to attach to the suction line. One of the gas stations in Marblemount has a hardware supply and I was hoping to find a fitting there. If they didn’t have it, I would have to go to Cascade Supply in Concrete, the next nearest hardware store, a half hour away, one way. Cascade Supply is pretty well stocked and I was sure they had the fitting I needed.

They didn’t have it in Marblemount so down to Concrete I went to get the fitting. I decided to replace the galvanized steel with plastic which wouldn’t rust.  While I was in Concrete I also took care of a few other errands. On the way back, I stopped back into Cascade Supply to get a galvanized fitting as a back up in case the plastic one didn’t work.  If the plastic fitting didn’t work and I wasn’t able to get back to Concrete by the time Cascade Supply closed, I would be out of luck or I would have to go to Darrington Hardware on Sunday, the next day.

While I was in the hardware store the second time I discovered that they had the same fitting in brass. The brass fitting was about three times as expensive as the galvanized fitting and over ten times as expensive as the plastic fitting but it was much stronger than the plastic fitting and it wouldn’t rust. So I went with the brass.

At some point during this whole process, I had gotten my days confused. There was a memorial service in Concrete that afternoon, or so I thought, that I needed to attend. So I didn’t go immediately back to fix the pump. I went home and got cleaned up and went back down to Concrete only to discover that the service was the next day on Sunday.

So I changed back into my dirty work clothes and went back to the Stump Farm. I got the fitting and new foot valve put on the suction line. After a leak check, which seemed okay, I put it down into the well. Again, I had trouble getting the pump primed. I thought the foot valve was leaking again but when I unscrewed the suction line, water was standing in it. That meant that the foot valve was fine and I had gotten a good seal on everything. I finally figured out that the pump had probably drained more than I realized so I needed to dump more water than I expected into it to get it primed.

I fired the pump up and it pumped like it was supposed to. I topped off the water tanks and the priming jugs and shut the pump down, hoping it would still be primed when I checked it the next morning. It was.

Simple little things like this can burn up a day, even if they don’t evolve into something more complex and time consuming, which they sometimes do. Between this little project and my getting days mixed up, I burned up most of a Saturday. I burned up several weekends last year on a problem with a fuel line on the tractor. These things can’t be ignored though. No matter how much I would rather be doing something else, the cows need water and they need to be fed. So almost everything else takes a back seat to these concerns.

I am just glad I decided to check the pump on Saturday when I had the time to fix the problem without having to take time off from work. If I had waited until Sunday afternoon when the cows were out of water and all of the local hardware stores were closed, I would have been in a real fix. I have good neighbors who would have let me use their water for a bit until I got things squared away so I am sure everything would have worked out but I try to be careful not to wear out my welcome.  

The foot valve on the right. The spring underneath the nut holds tension on the valve disk, keeping it shut. The perforated cone to the left is a screen that keeps larger debris out of the foot valve. The screw holds the screen on the end of the foot valve. 

Foot valve looking down at the valve disk. 

Foot valve and suction line. The fitting in the middle attaches to the suction line at its upper (left in this photo) end and the foot valve at its lower end, connecting them. Note the rusty mud on the suction line. 

Close up of foot valve and hose fitting. It is hard to see in this photo but about an eighth of an inch of material fell off the hose fitting. This was the source of one of the leaks. If one looks at the lower end of the threads, there appears to be a bulge. The material to the left side of that bulge crumbled away to the touch, leaving fairly clean metal behind. All of the material that crumbled away was the galvanizing which helped protect the steel underneath from corrosion. With the galvanizing gone, if I had reused the fitting, even if I managed to stop the leak, the fitting would have likely corroded and failed even more quickly. 

Cows might not be the smartest animals in the world but they are quite curious nonetheless. The cows weren't really thirsty, they were just wondering what I was doing and if I had anything good to eat. This is why I try to get the pump taken care of before I move the cows. You can still work around them but it is much harder with them poking into everything and you yourself having to avoid getting stomped on.

I cut the lower few inches off the suction line. There are ribs in the fittings that leave an impression in the plastic that sometimes makes it harder to get a seal. 

Suction line with new brass fitting. I carefully heated the plastic to soften it, pushed the fitting into the suction line and tightened the hose clamps around the ribbed section of the fitting. 

Preparing to put on the new foot valve. The crescent or adjustable wrench was used on the hex part of the fitting to keep the fitting from spinning in the suction line when the foot valve was tightened on to it. The pipe, or Stilson wrench was used on the foot valve itself. This photo is not entirely accurate. The crescent wrench pictured is a 12 inch crescent and it was too small. I rad to run back to the house and get a 15 inch crescent to do the job. 

Teflon tape. The white stuff in the roll and on the threads of the fitting is teflon tape. Teflon is well known as a substance that nothing sticks to. In tape form it also makes an excellent thread sealant. 

Leak test. I poured some water into the suction line and then stood it up in the limbs of an old apple tree nearby. Gravity caused the water to run down the suction line against the foot valve. In this way I could check that I got a good seal on the hose fitting to the hose and to the check valve and that the check valve was working before I took the trouble of lowering it down into the well, a rather tricky process. 

The well house. The suction line is lowered into the opening below the pump. This is a 8 or 10 inch pipe that is used for a casing. Inside this pipe, about ten feet down, is another pipe about 3 inches in diameter that goes all the way below the water line in the well. The suction line goes into this inner pipe. Getting the suction line into the 3 inch pipe is tricky. It usually involves many minutes in a cramped area dangling the suction line with many missed attempts before you get the suction line in just the right spot to thread the needle and get it into the three inch pipe. 

Water! The water in the tank is murky from stirred up mud and rust that will eventually settle out.

Priming jugs. Since this pump is the only nearby location for water, I always make sure to keep the priming jugs full. This way, if the pump loses it's prime, I have a ready source of water to re-prime it. Note the jugs are not filled all the way up. I leave the jugs in the well house over the winter and the extra space is left in them so they won't be broken by ice if they freeze. 

Well house in operation. Note the lid over the casing and around the suction line. I built this from steel to replace a wooden one that had rotted away. The lid keeps dirt from getting into the well. I spent several weeks in 2008 cleaning the well out when, because I hadn't been paying attention, the wooden lid rotted away and dirt got into the well and almost filled it in. I also blocked several holes in the cinder block walls that allowed a lot of dirt to get into the well. 

P.S. The next Saturday, the 19th, I spent part of the day harrowing the pasture at the house. This is the winter pasture and it is where I moved the cows from.

The view from the tractor seat. Now imagine this scene slightly blurred from constant bouncing with a rough landing after each bounce. Then imagine how stiff your back would be from doing this for several hours. I'm glad the field isn't any bigger and that the tractor seat has a spring to somewhat mitigate the bouncing.