PTO Water Pump?

   / PTO Water Pump? #1  

rpeter

Silver Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2004
Messages
175
Location
Cumberland county Pennsylvania
Tractor
Kubota B7800
We have just had the driest March on record and I have 2500 hardwood trees (seedlings) that would like a drink of water. I have a six acre lake and will be filling 55 gallon drums on my trailer and will haul them (kubota B7800) down the rows of trees pumping about a gallon of water on each tree as I drive by.

My question is what should I use for a pump? PTO driven, gas, 12V, what? I do not need high volume or high pressure. Any ideas?
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #2  
I hate to state the obvious, and I'm sure you've thought of this...

But given that you don't need high volume or pressure... How about gravity?

Couldn't you just use a siphon? Or put a tap in the bottom of the drums?
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #3  
I think he probably wants a pump to help him fill those 55g drums, then double duty it to exhaust the water...

Soundguy
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #4  
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( pumping about a gallon of water on each tree as I drive by )</font>

Will a gallon per tree be enough? My avocado trees straight from the nursery (3 gallon containers) require about 30 to 40 gallons of water per week. For my situation, a couple gallons would slightly prolong their eventual death.

I guess if you have 2500 trees (I have a similar number) you have already figured out how much time it takes to do anything that requires visiting each tree... if you spend 1 minute watering each tree it will take over 40 hours and will be time to start again.
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #5  
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I think he probably wants a pump to help him fill those 55g drums, then double duty it to exhaust the water...)</font>
DOH! Of course... I'm too used to being able to fill things with a hose.
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #6  
The PTO pump would probably give you more versatility. I have one that I use for watering trees and then use it for running a sprayer.
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #7  
I suspect you really need to consider alternative methods. here. The time it is going to take you to fill, haul, and water every day is going to be pretty high.

I have a PTO pump that recently cost me $119 plus the PTO adapter of $32, and it can pump 9 gal per minute @ 540. The pump is rated to 2000 rpm and will pump some ridiculous amount like 30 gallons per minute. I would suggest the PTO pump route because you'll get those drums filled much faster.

12V pump pumping a typical 3GPM would take 73 minutes to fill 4 55 gallon drums.

My pump running at 540 rpm would take 24 minutes. If I add a 2:1 pulley, then roughly 12 minutes. I don't know that I would try to fill any faster than that because it seems like things would start breaking trying to pump a crazy 30 GPM into drums.

Suggestions: If you live where it is wet, use sprinklers. Invest in enough hose to get you next to the lake, drive your tractor to the lake, hook up the hoses (1 to lake, 1 to sprinklers), crank up the PTO to a reasonable rate, eat a sandwich, read a magazine, or I guess you could go pull some weeds or something productive.

If you live where it is dry, then invest in drip irrigation, get as many 55 gallon drums as you can haul on a sturdy trailer (a whole lot of weight there) and drop the trailer off and quick-connect the interconnected drums to the irrigation and go do something else letting gravity do the pressure work (might want to regulate it too). A system like this should last a long time. OR you can go back to the "get a really long hose" idea and leave the drums up connected to the drip or soaker system, and every day just go down, hook up to the hoses, pump the drums full, then go do something else.

No offense, but drive-by watering that many trees is crazy.
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #8  
I would think that if it's possible, you could dig light trenches along side the trees and pump water to them right out of the lake. A good PTO pump would pump enough water to get it way down the trences and provide for the trees.

Of course, you don't want to be so close that you damage the root systems, but I've seen this done on tree farms and it seems to work pretty well.

John
 
   / PTO Water Pump?
  • Thread Starter
#9  
Well, I have been called crazy before, and I might be, however, I have a $10,000 investment in those trees and I would hate to see it go down the tubes because I was to lazy to do a little work. The trees are spread over about 12 acres of land. I am hoping that the dry weather does not last to long. Trenches might work, but digging trenches every 12 feet on 12 acres of land is a lot of work if I only need it for a couple of months. I was really interested to see if anyone had used PTO pumps. It looks like you are saying they do work.

With gravity feed my wife and I can do about 5 trees a minute. But one of the big time wasters is transferring from one drum to the next and restarting the siphon. I was hoping that by using a pump I could cut down on the transfer time, pump the water a little faster and maybe get up to 10 trees a minute. At least then I can get the job done in one long day.

Thanks for all the input guys!
/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
   / PTO Water Pump? #10  
Here's an idea.

Get a 55 gallon barrel. Add a water faucet to it to attach a water hose.
Run water hose from that barrel to about 4 trees.
Every day fill up the barrel and let it drain to the trees.

Repeat for all the other trees.
Seems it would be faster to fill up barrels than it would to water trees.

I used to know a guy that had a tanker truck for water.
He would drive it down to the creek behind our house,
drop the intake line into the water, and open a valve behind the cab.
The valve was hooked to the top of the tank, and to the intake manifold.
Used engine vacuum to fill the tank.
Had to time it just right to keep from flooding the engine.
Took about 30 minutes to fill a 1500 gallon tank.
But it worked well for many years.
(I think he had a way to tell when it was near full).

Pooh Bear
 
 
 
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