Running water line 900'

[MPrewitt]

The wife started a flower bed up by the highway which is about 800' to 1000'from the house. We are on a water well system. We are both tired of taking water in buckets up to water the trees and plants that she planted.

I want to run a water line from the well up to the flower bed.
My question is can I run a 3/4" line that far without have a pressure drop and end up with no flow at the flower bed. Or do I have to start out with a larger line for a couple hundred feet then reduce it to a smaller size for another couple hundred feet then reducing to my final 3/4" size for the final couple hundred feet.

 

[Richard]

I don't know the answer but here's what I did.

My uncle has some blueberry bushes across the field. I'd guess 500 feet away and on about the same elevation as my house. The ground slopes away from the house and then back up to the berries.

He wanted to put a line in while I had a trencher out here so I dug the trench and we put in a 1" black poly pipe from the bottom of my yard up to the berries.

Last year during the drought, we used it for the first time. I take a water hose from my house (supplied inside the house by a 1/2" copper pipe) and connect the hose at the bottom of my hill to the black tubing. We attached a hose on the berrie end, with a drip line on it.

The pressue at the berries isn't as high as at the house but it DID work and saved the bushes last year.

I think since the bushes are on the same elevation as the house, the gravity pulling the water down my hill helps push the water up the hill to the bushes. Think of a "U" and water seeking its own level.

If it won't work for you, another thing we did... he has a 300 gallon tank on the back of a trailer (maybe 275?)

Anyways, I hooked trailer to the tractor and delivered several tank loads of water up there during the drought, prior to getting the hose system hooked up. Was pretty easy using the tank although you couldn't set it and forget it like the soaker hose.

 

[charlz]

The bigger the better and the less couplers the better. You really need to know pressure at the starting end, change in elevation etc. to calculate the friction loss.

What do you plan on doing at the far end? A hose? A couple of drip emitters?

 

[atpchas]

I don't know the answer but here's what I did.

My uncle has some blueberry bushes across the field. I'd guess 500 feet away and on about the same elevation as my house. The ground slopes away from the house and then back up to the berries.

He wanted to put a line in while I had a trencher out here so I dug the trench and we put in a 1" black poly pipe from the bottom of my yard up to the berries.
<snip>

Where did you buy the 1" black poly hose? I've been trying to find some for quite a while and have not been able to match the hose that was installed 40+ years ago.

We have a run that is about a half mile from the spring to the house. The spring is high enough above the house that there is excellent pressure and volume despite the length and couplings.

Charlie

 

[charlz]

Where did you buy the 1" black poly hose? I've been trying to find some for quite a while and have not been able to match the hose that was installed 40+ years ago.

Lowes and Home Depot both carry 1" black PE pipe, psi rating varies between the two chain stores. Usually only in 100' lengths though. 3/4" can come in 300' rolls.

 

[KTM300]

Would the 3/4" be suitable to supply a "mother-in-law" quarters about 140' from the main house at about the same elevation? Includes small kitchen and bathroom. Pressure is boosted to 60 psi at the main house.

KTM300

 

[EddieWalker]

The size of the pipe is not going to increase your presure. Only gravity and a an inline pump can do that.

At 900 ft, you will loose allot of pressure unless it's downhill. Then you can actually increase pressure significantly. The size of the pipe allows you to carry more volume, but that's only significant if you have multiple uses for the line and have enough pressure to supply it.

Do you know how much pressure that you have at the pumpe or where you will tap into the line for this run?

Even in a worse case scenerio, you will have some amount of water coming out of the line. Depending on how big the flower bed is, you could either use a hose to water the plants and be happy for not having to carry those buckets, or you can hook up a soaker type system to do the watering for you.

I have a similar situation for a flower bed that I'm going to put in sometime in the futre. I ran a one inch line with 65psi at the begining, 600 feet. I'm down to 30 pounds at my spicket. This is plenty for what I want it to do, so the loss wasn't a big deal. I also ran electricity and will install a sprinkler system with two sprinkler heads working at a time.

Eddie

 

[jinman]

The wife started a flower bed up by the highway which is about 800' to 1000'from the house. We are on a water well system. We are both tired of taking water in buckets up to water the trees and plants that she planted.

I want to run a water line from the well up to the flower bed.
My question is can I run a 3/4" line that far without have a pressure drop and end up with no flow at the flower bed. Or do I have to start out with a larger line for a couple hundred feet then reduce it to a smaller size for another couple hundred feet then reducing to my final 3/4" size for the final couple hundred feet.

You didn't say how big the flower bed is or how you plan to water it (hose, soaker hose, drip irrigation). I think a 3/4" line will be fine for a small flower bed or to feed almost any kind of drip irrigation. It might even be fine for single 50' section of soaker hose. If you plan much more, I'd go with a 1-1/2" black poly for the first 900' and then drop down to a more common 3/4" pvc for the distribution and multiple spigots. The advantage of the black poly is that it will have enough flow for you to tap into it anywhere if you ever decide to add something else somewhere along the route.

Everywhere you put a spigot, be sure to drive a section of angle iron into the ground and clamp the riser pipe inside the angle to give support. That will keep the PVC from breaking at the joint down in the ground if an attached hose gets tugged.

 

[CurlyDave]

Actually, there are two criteria for choosing the correct pipe size.

One is pressure drop, and the second is that you want to keep the water velocity under 7 feet per second, in order to prevent suspended particulates from causing erosion of the pipe.

Every time I have analyzed a pipe size, the second criteria always required a larger size than the first.

 

[adlertom]

My question is can I run a 3/4" line that far without have a pressure drop and end up with no flow at the flower bed. Or do I have to start out with a larger line for a couple hundred feet then reduce it to a smaller size for another couple hundred feet then reducing to my final 3/4" size for the final couple hundred feet.

The larger the pipe, the less the friction loss. You don't need to to step it down every couple hundred feet like you described, just run a big pipe all the way to the end, then reduce at the final coupling.

You could accomplish the same thing by running two smaller pipes in parallel, but that would probably be less cost effective than a single larger pipe.

A small increase in pipe diameter results in a large decrease in friction loss.