I have a submersible pump outdoors for the water to my house. Indoors is a holding tank and pressure gauge. It seems the pressure gauge keeps slowly declining down to 20. Then when the toilet is flushed, the gauge kicks on and climbs to 50. Then left alone for a while the gauge again declines to 20. Do I have a leak somewhere? If so , where? Does the ballast inside the holding tank need to be pressurized? If so, how where? I seem to remember years ago, my husband did something with a bicycle tire air pump. Makes sense? Thanks
If it's going down while nobody is using water then the check valve or foot valve is leaking through when the pump is off. It should pump it to a determined PSI then shut off. I suppose there could be a leak somewhere in the line, but I suspect the check valve. It's pretty common. ....the ballast does need to be pressurized but I doubt that's your problem. If that was bad you would have severe water hammer.
I assume you are saying that the pressure drops to 20 when no water is being drawn by any faucets, since that will naturally happen if water is drawn. Four things I would check - first look for leaky toilet float valves - the tank level will drop, and the valve will open periodically to refill the tank if the seal is bad on the float valve. Secondly, make sure you have a check valve installed on the supply line into the pressure tank to prevent water from flowing back down into the well. Third, you may need more air in the tank - I would put enough air in so that the off/on cycle was 60 seconds when one faucet was fully open drawing water. This would not be the cause of leakage, but it could increase the frequency of the 50 to 20 psi cycle. Fourth, I'd adjust the low pressure turn-on point up to over 30 vs. the 20 it is set for now - 20 is probably annoyingly low. Go for a gap of 20 psi from low to high - eg. 30 - 50 psi.
