Ok, so I rent a basement apartment, in an old house. The homeowners occupy the main part of the house. The pump is in the basement, and quite loud when it kicks on. There is an old pressure tank next to it, with a schrader valve on the top, and no sign of a pressure switch anywhere.

When water is drawn, the pump is constantly turning on and off. And when taking a shower(shower is no more than 15ft in piping from the pump), you get blasted with a shot of cold water when the pump turns on.

So, it appears that the pressure tank isn't doing it's job. BUT, the homeowners seem to think this is normal operation for a well, so they don't feel the need to look into the situation any further.

And it's quite difficult to sleep with this thing kicking on/off all the time.

Obviously, the pump has some sort of built in pressure regulation, or it wouldn't be turning on/off all the time, and it is unclear if this is a standard tank or bladder tank.

So how do I go about fixing this situation? If I can make this system work better for little/no cost, they will see how much better a properly working system is, and accept that it is faulty in it's current state.