Automatic water pump priming??

Squadir

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Good day guys, looking for ideas if anyone can come up with anything.

Here is the scenario:
I have a Leo aPm jet water pump with a smart head on a water supply line as a booster to assist with sending water up a storey to my storage tanks because water pressure is low in my area when there actually is water available. :mad:
The problem that I run into is that when there is no water supply (which happens quite regularly btw) air becomes trapped in the impeller area and I have to do a manual bleed of the air/prime the pump before it actually starts back normal operation. Sometimes during operation if there is a pause of the supply for more than a few seconds I again have to do a manual prime before regular operation is restored. ;Meh;Meh;Meh
The smarthead turns the pump off after a few seconds after detecting no water so the pump isn't really at risk of running dry and burning out when the air becomes trapped.

What I was thinking of doing is making a fitting to thread into where the prime screw fits and put an Air Release Valve in place so that the air can be automatically bled out when the water supply is restored, my only concern is that I'm not sure if the air release valve will allow air back in when the pump starts running because there will be a suction on the prime screw.

Any ideas or help will be greatly appreciated.
Here are 2 pics of the pump in question, you can see where the prime screw is right under the smarthead (gold screw/bolt)

leo-push-pump-s-head.jpg
leo-apm-37-water-pump-0-37kw-220v-5689-83855351-e27febc4b599707115bf3750acc07314.jpg
 
I would think installing a checkvalve before the input would allow the water that is in the pipe to keep the motor primed. Without the check valve, water drains backwards when there is no supply emptying the pipes. With a checkvalve, it would not drain back and if there was no supply, the height of the pipe would keep existing water always in the pipe since it can't come out without water behind it pushing it. At least in theory I think this would work.
 
I would think installing a checkvalve before the input would allow the water that is in the pipe to keep the motor primed. Without the check valve, water drains backwards when there is no supply emptying the pipes. With a checkvalve, it would not drain back and if there was no supply, the height of the pipe would keep existing water always in the pipe since it can't come out without water behind it pushing it. At least in theory I think this would work.

I actually had this exact concept in my head recently. Unfortunately (for me) I did try installing a check valve but it didn't work, the problem was that air comes in intermittently along with the water supply (a few seconds of air comes through the lines), the pump runs for a little bit and then stops when the air gets stuck in the impellar section again.
Another problem with the check valve thing was that I had to turn off a ball valve to the a ground level pipe line to keep the prime. If the ball valve is open then all the water from the vertical lines drain into it and the prime is once again lost.

If I don't find a solution I may eventually have to switch out that pump to another one that doesn't need to have the air bled out of the internals for it to work.
 
Hii, I am may a little late. But I would make a siphon. Where the pump alway has water in the pvc pipes. The water rest in the pipes till the pump turns back on.
 

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