It's called an accumulator. It's a tank that fills with water under pressure, and that water pressurizes a gas or a spring, and this pushes back on the water in your system so your pump doesn't have to.
Most systems (when on and not connected to city water) detect a lower water pressure, which causes the pump to turn on and re-establish the higher pressure. Once the pump has gone over the threshold of highest pressure, it turns off. Behind the scenes, the pressurization process pushes water into the accumulator, compressing the gas inside -- remember that liquids (generally) are incompressible, so the pressure goes into the accumulator until it is also pressurized, and at that point the threshold is reached and pump turns off.
When you need just a little water, the accumulator provides the pressure to push the water in the pipes to your faucet. When the accumulator is emptied, then once again the pressure falls enough to signal the pump to start again.
That's what an accumulator does.Here's a cool article that talks about how accumulators work in hydraulics, but achieves the same thing.
David
All categories in my profile are set to FOLLOW. Why is that? Shouldn't a user set which topics or categories they want as opt-in, instead of having to opt-out ever single one? Did I do something to cause this? David
