Your water system needs both pressure and flow working together to
appropriately give you water. Your piping should be sized to give you
anywhere from 8 to 20 GPM at approximately 35 PSI. If the piping, pump or
tank is not sized right you can run pressure below 35 psi while flow is
desired or you may have pressure but not enough volume (GPM) Your plumber
may have found your pump short cycling because of an undersized pressure
tank, and is suggesting a larger one to give you more "cushin or volume"
when demand is high. It is better for your pump to cycle on longer and less
frequent calls for water than short constant calls for water.



Getting more radius will require more pressure, but make sure you have the
volume to run more than one head at a time also.




"AustinMN" wrote in message
...
wrote:
I have well water, and my pressure is pretty pathetic.

When I was pricing out an irrigation system last year, I also had to
include the cost of upgrading my well pump and tank.
However, the plumber explained to me that these upgrades didn't have
anything to do with *pressure*. They were required so that the pump
would run longer, instead of lots of cycling off and on, which would
wear it out the pump.

I tested my gpm at an outdoor faucet: 5 gpm! Terrible.

My problem is, I want to get more radius out of my traveling sprinkler
(haven't commited to the cost of irrigation yet).

So I'm confused about pressure versus flow rate.
Will using a larger diameter hose do anything for me?

By any chance, are the lines from your pressure tank to the spigot badly
scaled? If you have very hard water, they can get to the point where the
effective diameter is 1/4 inch...or less. Most outside faucets are
pre-softener, so that you aren't paying to soften water you are dumping on
the ground. That means those pipes can scale much more easily than those
in
the rest of the house.

Austin