Electrical help needed

   / Electrical help needed #31  
Pooh_Bear said:
I stopped yesterday in Home Depot to check prices.
#6 stranded wire was 87cents per foot.
I would need 1000 feet of it. Plus conduit.
I'll buy a generator before I'll spend that much on wire.

Pooh Bear

Check the price per 500' roll not the cut price. Also check #8 AWG, I think #6 is overkill.
 
   / Electrical help needed #32  
I have a couple of ideas.

1. A crazy idea that might work. Note: this idea is very dangerous to bystanders (but cheaper than buying coated wire):

Pick up a couple of rolls of aluminum electric fence wire and some simple step in metal electric fence posts and yellow plastic fence insulators. The wire will be about 18 -22 guage, so you would need to run at least 4-5 wires each for ground, as well as the other 2 legs- that would be a minimum 12 starnds total- probably a few more for good measure. The plastic fence insulators will be fine at insulating the current since electric fences operate at several thousand volts. But- any person or animal that touched the fence while you had it powered would be seriously zapped. Of course one benifit would be that this would reduce the chance of someone vandalizing your pump while it was running :)

You mentioned that safety is a factor for you so you can probably throw the above idea out.

2. It sounds like you got a good deal on that electric pump and want to put it to use, but, why not just find a small, cheap gasoline powered pump? Leave your pipe on the ground and just take your gas pump down to the river when you want to pump some water. In terms of carrying it back and forth, a small gas pump won't weigh much more than your 1 hp pump and you won't have to worry about anyone stealing your wire. How much rise in elevation (head) will you need to pump the water up to? How many gpm's would you want? If you have little head and want lots of gpm's, maybe a 3hp trash pump (2 inch input/output) would do the trick -although you would probably need at use least 1 inch pipe with this type of pump. This would be much cheaper than buying a generator and in theory would use less gasoline bcause you would not have that extra energy conversion step and associated entropy.
 
   / Electrical help needed #33  
Hey Folks
SAFETY IS NUMBER ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can not afford to do it correctly to a proven code forget it. It is not only your life at risk but anyone that comes after you.
Greenhouseray
 
   / Electrical help needed
  • Thread Starter
#34  
I had a few solutions to the problem come along.
1.) the tomatoes in the garden all died from lack of water.
2.) I found out how to run my other little pump off the tractor PTO.
3.) my neighbor that raises cows wants to do the same thing and will pay for the wire.
And I can tee off from his line.

There is even another solution that would let me use #10 wire
but it would require me to dig a ditch back from the river some.
According to the pump manual I can use #10 wire up to 280 feet.
It's 220 feet to the tree line and less than 60 feet to the "beach".
I could dig a ditch back from the river to about the 250 feet point.
Place the pump there and use #10 wire to feed it.

Pooh Bear
 
   / Electrical help needed #35  
Pooh Bear

Place a jet pump up near the house and run two pipes to the river. At the river install the venture head of the jet pump. So now all you have in dealing with the distance is the cost of two PVC pipes, cheap compared to copper.

Probably the lowest cost to accomplish what you’re trying to do, also nothing of value will be out at the river to tempt anyone into stealing what’s there.
 

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