Domestic water pump lubrication

[Daveedayv]

I have my water pump connected to my tank, and supplying toilets and washing machine.
Question is, water in the toilet is brown, leading me to believe possibly some rust in water pump? The concern is that the brown water may stain clothing being washed in washing machine.

Can I lubricate the pump anywhere? And what can I use?
Also don’t want to use anything that will affect the laundry.
Can lubricate and run pump for a while before using washing machine again.

Thanks for any advice.

[GCE]

If you have a cast iron pump section it may be worthwhile changing the pump to a stainless steel housing .
I would think that the constant use of the pump would prevent any rust build up.
Inserting a filter in front of the pump with get rid of some of the solids in the water .

Is the water rain water or borehole - If borehole it could be iron in the water which will definitely damage a washing machine

[Daveedayv]

Pump had not been used as often, connected all up about two weeks ago. So more regular use these days.
It is rainwater, so not iron in water.
Think it is cast iron. It’s a Pascali clean water pump.

A little noisy too, hence me wondering if some sort of lubrication is necessary.
Can’t find the manual that came with pump. Wasn’t too informative anyway from what I remember.

[GCE]

I would put a filter in the line , nothing to complex , and maybe a bypass valve back into the tank so that if it stands for awhile you can circulate the water in the tank to clean the pump.

[Daveedayv]

Thanks for the advice.
Makes sense to do a bypass, will keep pump running and clean, also to circulate water in the tank.
Think it was because it was standing a while. That’s why I wanted to know if I need to lube as well.

[AndyD]

There's nothing you can lube in the 'wet end' of the pump, it uses the water flowing through it as lubricant and coolant. Any grease or oil you put in the wet end will get mixed into the water when it runs which will cause a whole bunch of new problems.

Sounds like it might be a cast iron pump housing as mentioned above in which case you'll get a small amount of rust in the water. If you're using the pump regularly with a reasonable amount of water flow the rust won't be noticable. If the pump is standing for longer periods like a day or more then you'll get some rust coming through with the water when it first starts pumping in which case you could manually dump the first 5 or 10 litres to get rid of most of it.