Sprinkler Pump from my Pond advice needed.

[IXLR8]

Eddie, you said you had 200 amps available, to you need 200amps??? To run your 2hp pump and other assorted things, I bet you will actually need less than a 100 amp service. Unless I missed something in this thread. What are you going to power at the end of this line??

 

[EddieWalker]

Pressure loss is strictly a function of pipe size and elevation change. Many builders do not understand that long supply line needs to be larger diameter even if the supply is only feeding a 1/2" garden hose.

The previous owner here installed our water line and wisely chose to put in a 2" line from the roadside utility connection. We have about 1800' of water line and a 150' elevation gain from the road to the house. The yard hydrant here has 45 psi with the hydrant full open (about 5 gpm IIRC). We lose 75 psi due to elevation gain with 120 psi at the road.

Figure about 0.5 psi per foot of elevation gain. Reducing the line diameter by half will increase the pressure drop (due to friction) by a factor of 4 or more.

If the pump has a 1 1/2 inch discharge, are you suggesting that I could increase volume and pressure if I ran a 2 inch line from the pump to my gardens? Run is 900 feet with 20 feet of rise in elevation.

 

[EddieWalker]

Eddie, you said you had 200 amps available, to you need 200amps??? To run your 2hp pump and other assorted things, I bet you will actually need less than a 100 amp service. Unless I missed something in this thread. What are you going to power at the end of this line??

The pump is the main thing to power. The one that I'm looking at on Amazon says that it is 230 volts and 11 amps. This isn't normal to me, so I'm either missing something, or not understanding what it needs?

Some day in the future, I would like to run power from the pump breaker box to my gazebo. Distance is probably another 500 feet. I would just want an outlet or two, and enough power to run my ceiling fans and lights. 20 amps would be more then enough. 15 amps would work too.

I think that if I had 220 volts and 30 amps at the pump, I would have more then enough power to do everything I wanted to do down there to power the pump and my gazebo. Neither would be used at the same time. Parties at the gazebo usually end before it gets dark out. The pump would start automatically after midnight. Maybe early morning before the sun comes out. That will be fine tuned once it's working.

 

[ponytug]

Thank you for the link. If I understand it correctly, I have 200 amps and 240 volts at the breaker at my meter. If I use 2AWG Aluminum for 1,000 feet, I'll have 75 amps at the end of the run and a 14.7% voltage drop, or about 36 volts. That leaves me with 204 volts, which isn't enough.

I've looking on Youtube to see how others have done their intakes and what I like the best is kind of a L shape with the pipe laying on the floor for of the pond and the intake facing straight up. They add a couple of T's the the line to keep the intake in the upright position. In my crazy thinking plans, I'm considering adding wheels to it so it goes in and comes out easier. My thinking is that to drain everything fully, I'll need to pull it out of the lake in the Fall. Worse that I've seen is about 2 inches of ice on the pond.

That math is not quite right, but the real answer is more in your favor.

The way to do the voltage math is start with your expect load size at the end of the run; here you have a two horse pump (call it 10A), plus perhaps another set of 20A (2x120x20A) load in the future. So, that's 30A of load. Plug those numbers, 240V 30A@1,000' into the Southwire calculator, and you get 2/0 copper wire for a total of a 2.7% drop. You would need to step up to larger size wire if you use aluminum. Given the distance to the gazebo, I would run a separate calculation of 240 20A@1,500' (two 20A 120V circuits) to make sure that you would still be OK at 2/0, which you would be. You are golden!

If you go with that intake arrangement, I would make sure that you have enough screening area to handle your flow, and still not clog with leaves/algae/grass clippings. If you insulate/bury the pipe where it leaves the pond, you should be fine.

All the best,

Peter

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I did this same thing to water my food newly established food plot in the middle of a drought a few years ago. Harbor Freight has a high pressure pump that I used. It powered 2 sprinklers quite well, used a generator to power it. I have know idea if it will push the water that high with enough pressure though. If you are not wanting to sprinkle but instead use soaker hoses you could use a regular low pressure pump. Sound like a worthy thing to try, good luck.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Don't just drop that 200A breaker in just because you have it. Electricity is deadly. If you want to have that much capacity down the line you need a breaker sized to your wire size, then a sub panel at the load with a breaker sized correctly for the load on the pump. Otherwise, you just need a breaker sized for the pump, not to exceed the rating of your wire.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Now that the safety spiel is over... You have 1,200 amps free? What do you do? that's a lot of capacity. Also, what type of irrigation is being used and how big is the garden? We saved a LOT of water by switching over to drip irrigation from sprinklers. Drip uses way less water and all the water used goes directly where it needs to go. No run off at all.

 

[EddieWalker]

When I brought power into my land, I wanted enough power for two houses and a big workshop. The guy I spoke to from the power company told me that the cost was the same for 600 amps, up to 1,200 amps. In my mind, I figured it was a no brainer to have as much power available as possible. There are six 200 amp breakers inside the box. I'm using three of them so far. I have three that are empty. My current plan/thinking is to use one for my pump and gazebo. One for my barn that is currently powered from my house, but I'll disconnect that when I add on to my barn and have it's own breaker. And then another will be for my workshop, that may or may not happen.

 

[EddieWalker]

The gardens are always growing. My wife is crazy about her plants!!! Here are a few pictures of what I'm dealing with. Seems that I only take pictures when it's raining!!!

For the last couple of weeks, my wife has been rescuing hundreds of potted plants from a nursery that has decided that they cannot take care of them anymore. Hundreds of the plants have already died from lack of water, but she's managed to fill up her mini van five times with layers of potted plants that she thinks she can save. There are hundreds more that she is trying to get, but they are over an hour away and the summer heat/humidity has limited what she can get done.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Yeah it would take a lot of work to irrigate all that with the type of drip system I'm using. But, a lot of it would be possible. We saved a bunch of water on just a 1,000 SQFT garden.

This is just an example of the type of material I'm talking about. I used the larger 1/2" for a trunk line, then the smaller 1/4" with drip emitters going down the rows. There are a few connectors that you need and there are several different types of emitters including spray pattern nozzles that might be good for that raised bed. We are super happy with the results on our garden.

DIG 1/4 in. Emitter Tubing 100 ft. W/6 in. Spacing in Brown SHB106 - The Home Depot

Extremely versatile, DIG's 100 ft. 1/4 in. Micro Drip Emitter tubing with 6 in. spacing is a low cost, small diameter drip line that can be used in any part of the garden for a water-efficient drip irrigation

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DIG 1/2 in. (.700 O.D.) x 500 ft. Poly Drip Irrigation Tubing B37 - The Home Depot

Made with premium quality polyethylene resins, DIG's 0.700 OD drip irrigation poly tubing is designed to meet the demands of any drip irrigation project, above or below ground, from residential gardening

www.homedepot.com