Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help well water supplement

I am going to be suppling my pond with well water next summer to maintain a certain level. My well head is about 100 yds from my pond. I will rangefind it soon. Can anyone advise what hp pump (this will have to be above ground) and what size pipe should be run this distance to pump as much as 20000 gallons at a given time? I would like to be as economical and efficient as possible. Should there be a supply tank and if so what purpose would it serve?

Initially I have more questions than answers. However bare with me.

Why do you need the pump to be above ground? Will this be electric, diesel? I would think that an above ground one could be noisy, but I really don't know.

I have a well I use to keep my trout pond cool, and top off my other ponds, that has a 1 1/2 hp. 220 volt submersible well pump. It's inserted into the well casing about halfway down, and the water keeps it cool. It's rated at 45 gpms which of course is 2700 gph and 64800 gpd. I run it 24/7 in the summer. Cost for electricity when running 24/7 is about $100.00 per month. But I sell the fish I raise, and recoup my costs, so this is not prohibitive. The well is 88 feet deep although we hit water at about 30 feet.

This well pump is about 4 inches in diameter and the well casing is 4 inches which is standard in our area. You can go with larger diameter well casings for more flow with larger pumps.

I believe the only limiting factor on distance is how much pipe you want to put in. My well is about 100 feet from the first pond and flows downhill underground through a 4 inch pvc pipe that was glued together in sections. Due to severe winters here in the north we decided to bury it, but in retrospect I believe as long as the 51.6 F. water is moving there is no chance of freezing. Additionally I don't run the well in winter anyway.

You don't need much of a slope for the water to flow, in fact, water will flow on a horizontal plane. Just drop some on the floor and you will see!

As far as a holding tank that may depend on the size of your pond. As you know water coming out of the ground tends to be void of oxygen with rare exceptions. If your pond was really small, say under an 1/8 of an acre and the flow was good I would run the water through a packed column (I have a homemade one) for aeration and to blow of nitrogen gas and possibly C02 before dumping into the pond. But if your pond is 1/2 acre of more I would simply attempt to dump it in so it drops and splashes into the water. If by some chance your well head is higher than the pond, (this is my case) then you can actually raise the pipe at the end, as in adding an upturned elbow, proportionally to the drop in height from well head.

I hope this helps some.

Bill, The HP of the pump will be dependent on the depth of the well. The biggest concern in pumps is "lift". You can push water a heckuva ways without having much HP.

If you want 20,000 gallons at a time, you need to know volume of water in the well plus GPM of inflow. Then you will know whether you need a holding tank. A 20,000 gallon tank would be a whopper.

I expect you could talk to any local well driller and get some technical answers.

Dave's absolutely right. You should talk to a local well driller -- actually get estimates and talk to more than one. Not only should they be well versed on what you will need, they should know what kind of ground water potential you have.

The reason I say to get estimates from more than one well driller as I found wide variances on prices. Cheaper is not always better, but I had one well driller quote me twice as much as the other for the same thing. One was about $4000.00 for well pump and assessories, and drilling while another was half of that. I went with the cheaper one and am not sorry. I have checked the quality of my well pump and it is top quality.

Let me give a few more facts. The well is about 110 ft deep and was dug by the owner that I bought the property from using a Deep Rock self drilling machine. The casing is 2" with no exterior casing. My pond is about 1 acre when full which it has been all winter. This well is located away from my house so the little noise an above ground pump would make wouldn't be a bother. I believe I could get a submersible for this size. I think my home well is this size inside of 4" casing with a submersible pump. Not sure I could keep an above ground pump from overheating now that I think about it. Our water table is high probably because we are near a river. The tank I was speaking of is the type for holding my household water. I believe this would probably be unnecessary actually. Cecil I plan to have the pipe at the pond situated such that the water does alot of splashing onto rocks as it enters the pond. The flow of water would hopefully be enough to fill to my minimum level in 2 or 3 hours. What do you guys think?

I still say you need to talk to a well driller that can supply you with a pump and expertise. One reason is a local driller should be able to tell you what the water potential in your area is. That well may be recorded on a state well log too. No use drying the local wells just to top your pond if your water potential is not that great.

I'm not an expert but a 2 inch diameter pipe is not very wide for a submersible pump. However they may exist.

You may be limited by how much you can pump by 2 diameter casing too. But for topping your pond it may be O.K.

Before I had my well, I bypassed my geothermal heating and cooling discharge (uses groundwater to heat and cool) and was pumping 20 gpms which filled the .62 pond and could more than keep up with evaporation.

I think splashing the water in on rocks would probably be just fine for a 1 acre pond.

I just built a new pond, and my main source of water is ten acres of watershed,so I decided to bore a well, the first went down 600' and produced a 10 gpm flow, not enought, so we bored another, this one 200', and the flow rate was 75 gpm, so I installed a 2hp submersible pump, I should be able to pump a constance flow of 25 to 35 ghm. this lake is a little less than an acre, the rainfall here lately has been very short, but I have about 2' of water in the deepest section of the pond, it has been 2 week since it last rain, I am like everyone else alway worrying about a leak, will it has dropped about 6",I think due to evaporating water
ok my question is, my well is 45' from the pond,how should I pipe the water to the pond, should go to the bottom,should I run the pipe to the water edge, or should I shoot the water in the air, like a fountain, and what size of pipe should I use.

any comments appreciated,my first pond

as far as an above ground pump...im not so sure that would work....depends on what your talking about....i know if it 'pulls' water out then it wont work...however if it 'pushes' water out then it will. the farthest you can pull water out of anything is around 34 feet. it deals with gas pressures. hope this adds some useful info.

Path, Well water contains no oxygen. Do not pipe it to the bottom of the pond. Prior to introduction to the pond, I would break it up and oxygenate it. This has been discussed before on this website. Look it up and get some ideas.

I envy you the 75gpm well and even the 10 gpm one. In some parts of Texas, we measure wells in pints per minute.