Noticed late yesterday that the BG where sweeping out beds in places they normally do not bed with the water a little higher than normal. I decided to raise the 3 acre pond 6" overnight to give them some more depth to keep from exposing those beds if the water where to drop. Attached you can see the high volume well pumping in water when I turned it on right at 7pm last night. The other photo is showing how the water rose covering the 6" pipe overnight (taken just after 7 this morning) after I had shut the well off.
I burned 130 KWH(@ $.0975 farm rate) which totals out to around $12.67 to raise the 3 acre pond near 6" overnight.

Edit: KWH said 13 and was supposed to say 130.

You are a lucky man. ok maybe lucky isn't the word. You should be a happy man!!!

Sweet man.. I need that set up I would think that high volume saves money in the long run after initial build cost..

Thanks

FNC I am a Happy Lucky man.

BGK It sure does help to know that in the height of summer with no rain I can keep the pond full for less than $100. Not to mention all the other outside the box benefits in pond management of having a great supply of right at 70F water. I have used it to keep temps down in summer while areating. I have also used it to extend growing seasons by pumping in warmer water during short cold spells in early winter. I had about 7.5K in this well intially and as I understand now the price would probably be near 15K for one near the same.

gallons per minute?

Should be between 650-700 gpm to fill 3 acres 6" deep in 12 hours.

Cecil the only time the output was measured was when built. At that time it was pumping 438 gpm with a 7.5hp motor. It has been upgraded to a 10hp one since then. Right now I have little head pressure and I am well exceeding 500 gpm. I pumped between 5 to 6" which would make for an average between 565 to 680 gpm for that run.
Interesting thought is a can pump a semitrailer load of water to bottle in less than 15 min. For a quarter (25 cents).

Impressive! There are a lot folks here that would kill to have that kind of water capacity to top their ponds! Well not literally of course...

Tums,
Did you ever find out what pump head you have? It would be interesting to look it up.

You posted the part number to the motor, and I looked it up. Franklin 10hp, 200V 3Phase. That's an odd duck, but there are still those voltages being supplied out there.

esshup has a real good situation with high ground water supply and low head, and great voltage. An 8" well, 10HP 625gpm 2 stage or so pump. Gonna move an enormous amount of water on the cheap!

I'd be scared to pump that much water out of my aquifer since my house is supplied by a residential well..

I'd be more worried about my neighbors knocking on my door. LOL Believe it or not, being considered a "minor water user" as in under 70 gpm I am not responsible legally in Indiana if my neighbor's well went dry. That said, I wouldn't want to do that to them and I wouldn't want to be the bad guy on the street. LOL My one neighbor is a Marine so...

I'm the same way. Plus I'm the new guy on that street don't wanna be the bad new guy lol..

The aquafier here is HUGE. From reading the code, any person that has the capacity to pump more than 70 GPM from all of the wells combined on the property (not just one well) could be listed. Any large water producer within a half mile could be affected if a well were to go dry. There are multiple center pivot wells going in around here, so I think that if anybody's well went dry all of the large water producers would share the burden.

I've been here 10 years now and I'm one of the "long term" owners. The majority of homes on this street have changed hands at least once since I bought the place. My immediate neighbor to the East has been here 20 years.

With the center pivots going in around here, I don't think that I will have a choice in the matter if I want the pond to stay relatively full.......

JKB, is there a 6" well pump available? I have equipment to drill up to 200' deep, up to 6" dia. Anything larger than that and I'd have to call in a driller.

I figure 200 gpm would be enough, more gpm would just mean less run time on the pump.

I'll talk to the local well driller to see what the aquifier at my place will support. But, I think it'll be more than enough. I know of one farmer that's putting in a 1200 gpm pump for one of their center pivot systems.

I did some checking on the DNR site. I'm in the Eolian Sands Aquifer System, and the registered major water producers have 32 wells in this area, with flow rates up to 1500 gpm. Static water levels have been reported from 5 to 15 feet. Aquifer thickness ranges from 7 to 40 feet in thickness. Wells typically run from 50 to 105 feet deep.

Well, now I have to do some research. I can drill a 6" diameter hole, but I don't know if I can fit a 6" diameter well casing in that hole....

JKB I never did find out exactly what pump head I have down there. Outside of pulling the well I can not find anyone that can tell me.

As far as the water around here we have a great aquifer supply. Alot of the reseidential wells only use one stick of pipe to pump from. I can fill my pond in ruffly to weeks of solid running and not pull down enough water to effect 2 wells that are within a 1/8th of a mile of my well and are both only pumping from around 20' deep and both are drilled over 100' deep. I would be kind enough to pull a well and add another stick of pipe if anyone ever did experience an issue since those wells are on my property are now only used recreationally. You would have thought someone would read a survey before they would drill. There was 2 lots 1 acre big and 1 lot .5 acre big sold out of the property for 2 houses before I bought the surrounding property. I have been a good neighbor since I have wells and part of a barn that I discovered had been done across the property line when I purchased the land. The county ran water this way a few years back and I was a good enough neighbor to help the 2 houses that are not family owned run the county water to their residence. I was thinking of preventing any future issues with the use of those wells way back then.

Plenty of 6" stuff available.




The State (Gestapo) would not allow me to drill my own well because DEQ requirements and such. Ya need to be licensed and certified to comply with all the BS, which is OK by me.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Something to consider here, so put your thinking cap on.

If it took Tums 5 hours longer to bring his pond level up, to where he did, would that be detrimental to his pond and fish?
Answer here:__________________________

With a proper rig, the extra 5 hours of running the pump to accomplish the goal, would use about 48% of the total energy than what it takes to do it 5 hours quicker, even tho the pump is running for 5 hours longer. Call that crazy!

Same pump and motor, just controlled.

These are reasonable estimates. The reason I know that, is because I scribbled a bunch of junk down for this on the back of an envelope (bad habit), and turned the envelope over for more space, and it was my electric bill That was an omen!

There are many more Nuts-N-Bolts to this tho.

Hmmmmmmm That's interesting!

I'm thinking 6" because I was told the max GPM for a 4" well, even double screened is 100 gpm. I would be much more comfortable with double that.

I think the restricting factor on a 4" is the amount of water that can flow past the motor. They make 3" motor's for 4" wells.

I am reading up on well casings right now.

If you look at the Grundfos 300S with a 5HP motor. The motor is 3.75" diameter, however, the pump is 5.83" diameter.

Next question is, how much clearance do you need within the casing for the pump itself? Need to get wires by and such, plus draw down flow.

One thing I have read in tech manuals and have been told by a few drive guy's is to oversize your pump if you are going to use a VFD.

You can run a 200 gpm pump with a 5 HP motor at full tilt, and get 200 gpm out. You can run a 300 gpm pump with the same 5 hp motor, kick it back 30%, get your 200 gpm out at a great reduction in energy cost's.

You really need to pay attention to what is going to happen with head pressure tho. When you slow the impeller down, your pumping head will also be reduced. In low head applications, this really is not much of a problem. In high head, it's a bit more complicated.

I'm lucky that I have a low head application. The well for the house has a 12'-15' head.

I may have asked this before but is the any advantage to pumping well water with an above ground pump if the head is low?

No advantage Cecil. You have to combine suction lift and head pressure -vs- just head pressure with a submersible pump.

Not sure about this, but if you dropped a suction tube down a well, and you started pumping, then the well was being drawn down, it seems reasonable that the draw down would add to your suction lift, because your operating in more atmospheric conditions.

esshup,
Optimum casing diameter for the larger well pumps, like the 300S I posted above is 8". There are several variations of 6" casing that would probably work, but I am not seeing too many recommendations to go that rout, especially at 200+ gpm. 100 gpm might be OK, but it get's tight inside and could end up with a bunch of trouble.

I am not finding any 4" pumps that will do 200 gpm, or even close.

Best to just plan on an 8" casing.

From a VFD perspective, I never had any issues with these doing their proper job. My big concern has been about the motors. Grundfos specifically stated in one of their engineering guides that they prefer these to be used in Sensorless Vector Control, which is what one would want to do. They did specifically state the limiting factor, and that is the thrust bearing. 3 seconds to 30Hz is a whole lot better than everyone else out there, plus the motors are built properly for VFD control.

I am waiting on a VFD manual from Schneider Electric (Square-D) for their new Pump control that is specifically designed for pumping applications. I did get a price from our vendor and the 5hp rig is 1140.00, 3hp is 610.00 (I can beat them up a bit tho )

I also have the manual for the H2O Drive, which is a pump specific drive. If you scroll thru the PDF real fast, you see a subliminal in the lower right corner that says Yask, which stands for Yaskawa. It's their trademarked text.

Yaskawa is a premier brand and they have their own iQPump rig, plus many others. Quite often these large companies will private label their technology to other companies, give it a new look, but it is the same animal at often a higher price.

The Allen Bradley PowerFlex 525 I posted in the other thread has virtually every type of application built into it. I was set back a bit because this gizmo has about 800 parameter settings Cool thing is, the software is free and you can plug it into your computer -via- Ethernet, open it up in a web browser and see whats really going on in real time. I am going to order a 3HP rig soon to play around with. I have another project with a bunch of A-B stuff that's going out for special negotiated pricing (save a pile that way, but it takes some time), so I thought I would throw that into the mix.

I am done reading stuff for a while.

Thank you sir! 8" it is then. I am going to talk to the well driller tomorrow because a client wants to move forward with a well for his pond (s) and is also looking at 200gpm rate. He has an electrician that he likes to work with, and I will be touching base with him this coming week as well to feel him out on the 3-phase stuff. I'll also see if he knows what the voltage is on the property - they had to run power about 3/8 mile and that's still about 150 yds from where the well is going (or is tentatively planned to go).

These ponds are groundwater ponds, and I think that if we keep one pond full, there will be enough water movement thru the ground to help keep a 2nd pond fuller.

One cool thing about going to a larger pump and a VFD is you have a pretty decent window to play with flow -vs- economy. Pretty much all the drives will display the actual operating parameters like volts, Hz, amps, Kw and such. The fancier ones like the A-B, and I believe the Square-D have built in economic calculators where you plug in KWh rate and they will tell you how many dollars your sucking at the moment and how many you spent since the last time you reset it.

Tie it to a small PLC and HMI and you can do all kinds of fancy things. Punch a dollar figure on the screen, pump me 10 bucks worth, then hit start. All kinds of fancy things can be done.

Let us know what the driller and electrician say.

The lightbulb finally clicked today when I was in the car. Variable speed drive (VSD) Run the motor slower so you aren't using all the HP. Now I see why a much larger pump/motor is more effecient.

I'll let you know what they have to say.

Close, but no, you ARE using all the HP. Pumps are a constant HP (variable torque) application. You still are kicking out the same HP, just slowing the speed down, which increases the torque. You can set VFD's up either way. If you set it up for constant torque (variable hp), when you slow the motor down, your hp drops, but maintains torque. Don't want to do that, it will suck MORE juice.

Lowering the frequency to slow the speed down in constant hp mode will lower your KW consumed while maintaining name plate hp.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

Kinda confusing to someone who doesn't work with these types of devices.

Once you get the actual physical parameters of your well established, we'll take the next step, along with input from your driller. The electricians part of this is pretty easy.

Maybe do some pond monitoring in the future? You need many, many more gizmo's They're fun!

Got a message from the driller today, but couldn't get back in touch. Tomorrow's another day!

What specific parameters do you need?

I won't need anything until your well is established, other than that, it is a guessing game at this point.

I will not know myself, for my own well, until the hole is actually in the ground and I can see what's up! Then I can make the final decisions.

When dealing with unknown's, it's best to take it a step at a time. You can get within reason thru research/fact finding and really narrow it down, but it may not totally match the reality of the circumstance. You can prepare for many scenarios tho, and get a good fuzzy feeling, but until you get factual data, you wont have anything real to work with.

Just something to think about.

Some of those parameters can be adjusted before the well is sunk, like well casing size and well location from electric service.

Some things I know already because there is another well in close proximity. Head, aquifier GPM availability, line voltage, are known. Distance from well to electric supply could be determined and moved - it's a pretty open area.

On another note, I have some aluminum wire. Without measuring it, IIRC, it's 100-120 feet in length, and it is 4/0-4/0-2/0 with 4 AWG ground. Is it useable or do I have to buy something else? I know it depends on motor size.

What I plan on doing is putting in a service building. Not too big, maybe 16 x 24 at the max, but built pretty heavy duty. This would be quite close to the well, close enough just to get the rig in without any trouble. I'll also have my electric service dropped here. This will be the distribution center for water and electricity, and it would be pretty much centrally located for where everything has to go. Enough of this.

I still have to look up what wire is suitable for going down in the well from a VFD, but typically, you would want to use something like this from the drive to the motor: VFD Cable Hope that didn't scare you

It all depends on the drive manufacturers recommendations on how to rig one of their gizmos up.

Because this is low voltage, we probably won't have to worry about Reflected Wave Phenomenon, if you buy a quality gizmo. That sounds scary, but all it really is are very short, high voltage spikes that occasionally happen, and that can toast a motor in very much less time than a blink of an eye. Grundfos stated that their motors can eat 850 volt spikes all the time. Probably would never see 600 volt spikes at these low voltages, so I am not worried about that.

Corona Discharge, which I am sure a few on here have discharged a few Basically what this is, is when these high voltage occurrences happen and you have crappy wire with variable insulation. At the thin points in the insulation, a micro arc can occur. This little arc will produce Ozone. The Ozone will degrade the insulation on the wire, and when that happens, you may want a Corona or two!

You will want a line reactor on the input to the drive to clean up possible crap from the power company. They are pretty cheap. You can also put a line reactor on the output to the motor which will pretty much clean up these issues so you can use, lower cost, but decent quality wire going to the pump. All depends on the VFD tho. Don't want aluminum from the drive to pump, but OK for feeding the drive from the mains.

O.K. I understood some of that!

Glad you did i sure don't lol

JKB, I sent you some literature on waterproof connections and wire that I got at the PB convention. I wonder if they have any wire that would work for this application?

Esshup, I'll look when I get to work today. I don't remember seeing any wire, but those connectors were really nice.

Nope, no wire.

We have a lot of sources for wire and cable tho. I'll do some digging later.

JKB:

Pump question:

If I wanted the capabality to pump at least 200gpm, using a 3 phase motor, would the 300S30-1B Grundflos be best for the application, or is there other things that I need to know before I can make that decision? That one is 3 hp

It is one to consider as long as the head pressure works for you.

JKB, just talked to a company today that makes phase converters. They said that a VSD that was 2x as large as needed would also work as a phase converter.

They also didn't think that running a larger motor that had the capability to pump more gph at a slower speed would save any energy over a smaller motor running at a faster speed to get the same gph.

Thoughts? I think I see 3 choices. 3, 5 and 7.5 hp. If looking at the 320gph models, the determining factor is the head.

With that said, I think running a 3 phase with a VSD is a safer bet because I actually don't know how many gpm will be needed to keep the pond full.

Controls will be in an enclosed structure, that protects them from the weather.

I'm not trying to sell you anything

I know, I know. I'm trying to do research on my own because I may have to consult with a client on putting a well on their property that is identical to what I'm going to want. That well might go in sooner than mine, so I want to have my book of knowledge ready for the task.

Same aquifier, same soils, roughly same pond size. Only difference is the distance from electric source to the well.

I've been asked to contact well drillers to get estimates.....

If it gets any more urgent, I may be asking you if you have a free day on the weekend and I'll take a drive for a crash course in 3 phase and VSD's.

I've had a couple phase converters. These were the static type. They would run a motor, but not at full speed or power. They did not produce a balanced 3 phase output. A VFD takes in the AC line power, converts it into DC, chops it up, and outputs it as 3 phase AC. This is true, be it single or three phase input.

A while back, we had a rotary phase converter built for a customer. I saw it on the dock and asked what that is for. He said it was for a guy who needed to run a couple large motors for blowers. I asked, why not just use a VFD? Said he looked them up and the largest single phase input was 3 hp. These were like 15 hp. Told him that pretty much any decent VFD made today will run from a single phase source. There are a few parameters that need to be set. Some call it phase loss protection... With a VFD specifically intended to run on 3 phase, you do have to multiply the VFD size x 1.73 to run from single phase. Would have saved the customer some cash up front and in the long run in electric savings.

As far as I see it, there are no benefits using a phase converter over a VFD. Static phase converters will rob power and diminish performance, and with rotary, you have an extra mouth to feed because you have to run the motor on the phase converter too! Absolutely no other performance or efficiency benefits either. I think the VFD guy's will side with me.

If you follow the Affinity Laws for pumps, you will see that VFD's work out to an advantage.

I have to remind the guy from Square-D to get me the manual on the 5 hp drive. I am leaning that way.

You know the old saying, "If it were easy, then everyone would be doing it"!

They did say that if I was going to run a VFD that it had to be rated at twice the motor size, and that a correctly sized VFD takes the place of a phase converter.

I guess it all depends on the motor size, which is goverened by the head. Is head determined by static water level in the well casing? Or by something else?

Well esshup, I see that this has taken a few steps backward and fallen off a cliff. There is absolutely no way a phase converter can take the place of a VFD. They have it backwards

Phase converters use to be the norm for someone wanting to run 3 phase equipment from a single phase source. The market for phase converters is not industrial in nature. It's the guy in his garage with a piece of equipment. If I can get the motor to turn, that would be cool!, and then you deal with it. Electricity is way too expensive to use phase converters these days. Hell, you can build your own phase converter and cut the middle man out

Head is determined by pressure, and all inclusive pressure that the pump has to deal with to get the output desired.

Don't quite think there is a 1 day crash course available, anywhere!

We'll keep plugging away at it tho. Not very simple, and it is difficult to lay out the very detailed information required, on a discussion web site.

I need to think about buying some new fishing poles and other rig hardware so I can test out the glutinous cache of Stubby Steve's

Well, that's easy enough then. Phase converters are out.

O.K. I'll have 3 pumps for ya. Then we can go from there. Will that work? Head pressure, outlet pipe size, distance from pump to pond, distance from pump to electric supply.

What else am I missing?

Maybe, you start explaining it!

I got some fish to try and catch! don't know where yet, but they will be caught

O.K. Will do. Probably later on this weekend. This weekend is super busy for me.

Don't forget elbows and such.

It's gonna be a really crappy day outside. Guess I'll put off the the fishing till a better day. Forecast has snow today, rain all next week, then snow again next Friday. Yuck!

I'll just work on the panel layout and wiring diagram for the distribution building. I'll have a new Powerflex 525 drive here next week to test out. The two I ordered are 1HP units for a couple pumps I have.

Here is a link to Mathcad: Mathcad Express

I was going to post this a couple weeks ago when I installed it, but screwed up and went to the full blown trial instead.

I've had Mathcad since 1990 and it is a great tool. The last upgrade I got was version 12 in 2008. This was right before PTC bought Math Soft.

What I wanted to see, if the applications I had written over the years with the full version would open up in the free version. Have to wait a couple more weeks to do that. Full blown version is 1500 bucks.

Pump applications like this are an excellent candidate for spending some time and developing a Mathcad App. The free version would probably do quite well.

EDIT:
The free version wont convert my other stuff. Pretty fancy calculator tho, and you can save your stuff. Oh, yeah.. it works pretty nice. Quite a bit different than version 12.

That was a really Long weekend!

Well get back to this later this year. Don't know when tho.

It was, wasn't it?

O.K. Check back here tomorrow for updates. (that's later this year, right? )

What time zone are you in?

That would determine if tomorrow is today, or actually tomorrow

I had to order an electrical enclosure today for a project. I had my control enclosure quoted on the same ticket. That dropped the price, and qualified for free freight for the total order. Boss was happy, and I am happy. We both saved a couple hundred buck each

It's 210 feet from electric supply main (and meter) to the pond. The well could be placed anywhere as close as 60 feet from the electric supply to 200 feet away from the electric supply.

Just checked the existing well. Water is sitting in the well casing at 15' below ground level. New well would be roughly 200' away from existing well, at the same elevation.

There is an 18" drop in elevation from proposed well to pond (negetative head).

There are 3 pumps that I'm looking at: All are rated at 300 GPM. All are 3 wire, 3 phase, 230 volts. 3 hp is rated at a nominal head of 19 feet (model 300S30-1B), 5 hp is rated at a nominal head of either 31 (model 300S50-1) or 42 feet (model 300S50-2BB) and the 7.5 hp is rated at a nominal head of 70 feet )model 300S75-2). The wells in this aquifier are typically drilled to a depth of 90 to 105 feet and will support more than 1,000 gpm. Outlet pipe size on all of the well pumps are 3" NPT. Once out of the well casing, the pipe can be bumped up in size to 4" or 6" dia to reduce friction loss if needed. One elbow would be needed at the top of the well casing to direct the water towards the pond, after that there would be no more elbows needed - it's a straight shot to the pond.

I'm leaning towards the 5 hp or 7.5 hp models as the 19' of head for the 3 hp pump might be marginal.

And FWIW, Central Time (by a mile and a half).

I'll have to dig into the squiggly lines again, but if IIRC, the 5hp had a huge operating window with one of the impellers, and the HP took a nose dive at well over 300gpm.

3hp was marginal at best, but worth looking in to.

I may have to go to Kentucky the week after next. Basically to babysit and hold hands with a bunch of grown men (engineers) while they turn a new machine on

If so, I'll stop by on my way back.

Cool! Do that. Toss at least one fishing rod in the truck, you can try it out in the pond.