Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Well pump question

I will be asking about this to my well driller but in the mean time thought I'd post this question.

My present aquaculture well is a 2 1/2 hp 45 gpm submersible set in a 4 inch casing most likely half way down in a well that is 88 feet in depth.

There are no tanks are bladders and i can easily turn it on or off via a circuit box at the well or in the house. Works great for topping off the four ponds or continuous flow in the trout pond.

Anyway, I will need far less flow for my recirculating tanks in a pole building. I've been told by the well driller I can reduce flow with a valve without harming the pump but i'd like to reduce flow and reduce power consumption at the same time.

Is there a way to do this without changing out the pump?

If not is a variable speed pump an option to achieve these two goals?

I suppose a more economical option would be to direct flow to a tank and take make up water from that tank as long as I can keep it cool enough.

You'll need to change the pump. When you slow the impeller down to reduce flow, you'll also reduce the head pressure buy a greater amount, so you need to be careful on selecting your pump/motor combination.

Or, like you say, just pump to a holding tank and call it good.

Cecil, could you incorporate the "holding" tank into the floor so as to keep that at about 52 degrees?

I did a little research into the variable speed pumps and from what I was told the longevity/reliability are not there just yet. Not sure if your existing pump would function with a variable frequency drive to vary speed. This is at the limits of my knowledge, but something I might investigate if in your shoes. Freq drives are spendy, but if you shop you can find some deals.

From what I understand, the best way to run a pump is constant. The starting and stopping are what is hardest on them and also consumes considerable juice to start.

The questions I would have is:

1) What is the duty cycle of the pond filling project? Is it really intermittent?

2) What is the duty cycle of the recirc tanks? Constant I assume?

3) Any estimate as to what it is costing to run the present pump in either cost per hr or cost per day?

^ What they said.^

Do you know what your head is in that well? (How far down below grade is the water level in the well casing without the pump running.) In my searching for a well pump, that one that you have isn't very effecient.

See if 3-phase is available at your place. If it is, that's an option for a different pump. My well pump is only 3/4 or 1 hp and I can pump more than half of what you are pumping. My well is 66' deep, and the head is 13'.

I'm looking at a 5 hp 3-phase pump that can pump 320 gpm......

I am not sure what brand variable speed pump we have in our farm well but is constantly giving trouble. When we have thunder storms the pressure goes through the roof.

Sure could.

I'm thinking static water level is 30 feet. The household well is 16 feet.

Only once a year for ponds after a harvest and drain. I may even get away from that and just use rotenone after as many fish are removed as possible via seining.



Not necessarily. Still working out the numbers. Kind of think contant but low flow inconjuction with the mechanical filters and biofilter may be the best way to go. Could get by with much much less flow than 45 gpm 24/7 if I can keep the water under 65 F. Well water is 51.6 F.



Last I checked the cost is about $100.00 per month to pump the well continuously. Believe it or not that still makes the sale of the big trout profitable at just two of them will cover the cost of one month of pumping and I sell about 100 +.

I didn't think that there was that great of a difference in fall between the two wells.

A 4" well can produce up to 100 gpm. I think a holding tank might be your best (and least costly) option.

Not sure what you mean by difference in fall between the two wells? Can you elaborate?



I think you may be right.

What I'm really excited about is I can build all of the components myself for the coldwater recirculating system except for a rotary drain filter, which I may not even need. This will save beaucoup bucks.

Even with Intex pools I can have a center and side drain (Cornell Dual Drain) (which is the best way to remove solids) as long as I put the center drains and cpvc airlines down before pouring the concrete. Ironicially this is what high end koi enthusiasts have been dong for years as in a bottom drain and skimmer.

I've had so much good DIY info from the Koiphen site it's amazing. I will be doing the same thing they strive for: growing out high end large fish with excellent water clarity as efficiently as possible as far as water use.

The Intex pools one of my board members is using are still going strong after 5 years and they are a heck of a lot cheaper than glass tanks! No issues with spines with trout. I figure even if they don't last more than 5 years I'll still be head by buying another one.

"fall" between the 2 wells is the difference in vertical eleveation between the 2 wells. Back well is higher than front well, but how much?

You do not need 3 phase to run a 3 phase pump, in fact, for over a decade we only use 3 phase pumps with Variable Frequency Drives and have single phase power.

We have the same VFD on one pump for 12 years now that runs 6 month a year. The VFDs are very expensive but WELL worth it after the years go by especially if you want to control GPM/Pressure/ Thrust Modes/Feedback responses. They are ridiculously easy to program/wire/maintain and you can find used (rebuilt ones) frequently as people swap them out instead of repairing.

We primarily run Yaskawa VFDs just because of their reliability, in one application we pump 100 GPM over 2 miles with 170' of head to over 100 irrigation zones out of a pond.

Our old Safetronics P7 has been pumping up 200' of head with a 1 HP pump across 2 miles for 12 years now without a hitch and runs off a float sensor

Also as far as water temps go you can easily raise the temperature of water by using too small of pipe creating friction loss but will need a water hammer arrestor to save your pump. you can raise and lower the water temps depending on pipe size and length of pipe, the longer and smaller the hotter the water gets.

We have a section of sprinklers that a landscaper threw in a decade ago and I always wondered why the water was so warm there and killing the grass and when I dug up the sprinkler he had run 75' of 1/2" funny pipe with 4 elbows. Run 100 gpm at 100 lbs of pressure and things get rather warm quickly

Yep, I'm working with JKB here on the forum to run a 3 phase well pump on single phase. Can't get 3-phase here unless I want to spend a tremendous amount of money - closest is 2.8 miles away.

Back aquaculture well is 88 feet with static water level of 30 feet I believe. It's on a hill as you know. Most likely the pump is set at half the distance from 30 to 88.

Well at a lower elevation I believe is 60 feet with a static water level of 16 feet.

This would be for coldwater fish. Wouldn't want to raise the water temp.

Cecil, what kind of flow do you need for your cold water rig?

With the numbers you posted, and not really getting into details, you should be able to find a decent combo that will fill your needs and save you a few bucks in electricity.

The Yaskawa P7 is a pretty decent rig. Their newer offering is the P1000, and that has a bit of green stuff.

What Yaskawa did is marketed to the single to three phase agricultural world and you may see more of this brand in these applications. They also private label to other companies, so like the H2O Drive is actually a Yaskawa P7 wearing a different dress.

Saftronics was eaten by Emerson a while back and they stuck a few parts into the acquired Control Techniques rig's, which are the UniDrive's. They are on the side.

Yaskawa is quite over priced for what you actually get tho.

For a well or aeration system that you set up to be stand alone, I would suggest the ABB ACS310 rig. You can remote tho.

If you want to sit in your house on a crappy day and have full control and monitor from your puter, without any more cost than networking, I would go with the PowerFlex 525.

Sounds cool. Believe it or not only 2 gallons per minute of freshwater would be needed to produce 1000 lbs. of brook and brown trout per year, however, I'm still tweaking things.

So that would be more make up water with a tad bit on the side of flow thru?

Getting down to 2gpm with a 50-60gpm submersible pump by changing impeller speed won't happen tho. Head pressure will be gone and the motors can only be cut down to about half speed due to the thrust bearings, so naturally they don't offer anything with more than a 2:1 speed regulation.

I'm hoping that someone comes out with a better motor before I poke a hole in the ground. From what I have seen, Grundfos has the best motor out there so far. It would be nice if they at least had a 10:1 motor, then you would have many more pump options that could be tailored more closely to one's specific requirements.

Yeah it would probably have to be a partial recirc to keep water temps down for trout with a continuous small level flow through the system from the well.


I've decided to make some changes to my well pit area and enclose it to make it biosecure. Right now it has chara, snails, and i even saw a frog in there. I already have about 150 feet of buried 4 inch PVC headed to the trout pond complete with a gate valve to cut off flow to the trout pond and send it around the pond.I'll just extend it to the pole building to decrease digging.

I like this little DIY sand filter and think it would work well for iron removal. The inventor uses it to remove fines in his koi pond to produce crystal clear water. I know it will work to remove precipitated iron as I use filter material for a much smaller amount to produce gin clear water and this seams more robust.

This is the same guy that I duplicated five moving bed filters in a 55 gallon drum from. They will take up to 5 cubic feed of media which is a lot of surface area at 189 ft2 per cubic foot.

http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?69030-Birdman-s-Sand-Gravel-Filter

Hi Cecil- Just curious if you could not use a large bladder/pressure tank or a couple of them in series? 40+gpm might be a bit much for most residential tanks but if you can it back a bit I am sure it would work. The tank in my house that I put in is just over 80 gallons and I know they make them even larger. You can also bank a few of them together if you were to want as long as the bladder pressure is identical which isn't to hard to do. You could then have a pressure regulator on the output side of the tanks heading to your acuaculture setup. Even if you only needed 10pgm there would be big savings for you in the amount of $$$ to power the pump and cutting it back even further would be all that more of a savings.

Next year I am going to get another pressure tank like the one I have in the house just for my recirculation system as it will cut my jet pump running by 80% which will make my wife very happy! and the $$$ savings will pay for the $450 pressure tank by the end of the summer (Our hydro rates are crazy and I was using $65/month at a constant 4gpm inflow and I would like to bump it up to 8 for next year)

Ryan

Thanks Ryan. Lots of options. Still mulling them over. The planning is half the fun!

Don't quite get it.

How will bladder tanks save 80% in pumping costs?

I think he is referring to that vs. constant pumping?