Transfer pump at Bunnings

[xelasnave]

A heads up.
Bunnings have a handy transfer pump available...9 mt head I think 3000 ltrs ph but only $200 ...that is a great store price ..I got one..maybe will get another...its the sort of thing that when your house pump dies and you need one you will have to pay $600.
Alex

[muletopia (Chris)]

Alex,
When evaluating pump specifications remember that the maximum flow will be at the minimum head and the flow at the maximum head will be very small.
The only way to evaluate a pump is to look at the pump's pump curve.
Most pumps are most energy efficient near the middle of the range of flows and heads.


Many years of looking at pump curves.


Chris

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by muletopia

Alex,
When evaluating pump specifications remember that the maximum flow will be at the minimum head and the flow at the maximum head will be very small.
The only way to evaluate a pump is to look at the pump's pump curve.
Most pumps are most energy efficient near the middle of the range of flows and heads.


Many years of looking at pump curves.


Chris

Thanks again..I appreciate you sharing your hard won knowledge.
I can't lose..pumps for me are like gennys..you need big ones, little ones and many spare ones... And this one I may use just to run a supply from the dam to the van..it's still in the box and I don't even know what sizes etc...mmm maybe it was cheap because it had a strange size?...
Its job is not a hard one..a spare for the house ...And it is not very flash...I had to laugh to myself..a couple of days after our chat...the guy who is getting water from the dam where my fire pump sits...pumping away with such a large pinch in his outlet hose the flow would have been cut by half...I was going to point it out but he was sitting up on top of the tanker playing on his phone..no doubt would not like to be interrupted nor told of his mistake by some old fool from the city.

Alex

[The_bluester (Paul)]

The other bit to look at is the lift of course. We use a cheap Chinese open impeller pump to move water between two dams, one a long way from the house that fills quickly but is wide and shallow so the evaporation rate is bad, and a smaller but deeper one near the house (And pressure pumps) where the stock and domestic supply is taken from, which fills poorly. I really noticed that the performance of the transfer pump fell right off over the last two tanks of fuel as the lift increased to get at the water. Most years I end up carrying it out further and further into the shallow dam to keep it flowing but I couldn't be bothered with the mud to get a little better fuel consumption to water pumped ratio.

The joys of living with the legacy of a disagreement between the original owner of our place and the owner of the next place over, who subdivided it to create the place we live at now. There is another dam on our place which has a great storage capacity and used to be a shared water supply between both places, but the catchment is on the neighboring property. At the peak of the dispute ("You may communicate with me via my post office box") he was not adverse to cutting his own nose off by throwing a bank across the depression between our two places that the water flowed through, to cut the dam on our side of the fence off from getting any water. Neatly cutting himself off from accessing the storage too. In good years it fills but has been so dry so long that it has cracked and leaks, and in bad years it gets nothing (Like this year) or just enough to keep the ducks entertained for a bit.

[xelasnave]

I am going to build "my" solar pump hopefully soon.
I will explain it as initial tests showed promise with one I build down the river twenty years ago but was never around enough to do any decent tests..
But the idea is..you get a 44gal drum..put it on its side with a hole at the bottom..in that hole a shirt pipe into a t section...out of each a short pipe (6 inch) and a valve...so one valve let's water in..that end leads to supply and the other let's water out..that leads the water away.
The idea is the tank heats up and cools down and as it does so water is drawn in and water is forced out...will it work ...my very short observation of the one down the river suggested that the heating and cooling cycled more than once a day (as you could expect) as it seemed to trickle constantly ..but I was running the office back then and only got to look at it during a couple of lunch hours so it was never really observed.
Why won't it work or do you think it should...not much water will past but it should run more or less non stop.
Alex