Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Well $$$ Usage Update 2 yr cost

The 3 ac. pond 500+ gpm deep well was used to fill the pond in Sept. 2011 for $355.97. Ending Sept 2014 Total Usage to maintain full pull is $900.29 (9231 KWH usage).

Less than a dollar a day to keep the pond full. Seems like a bargain.

I'd pay that in a heartbeat to keep my pond full. $.0975 per Kwh.

Tums, do you have any specs on the type and size of well pump? I'm trying to do all the research I can on a well for my place.
Single phase or 3 phase?

ESSUP the original pump info I have that was at 438 gpm. I am 100% sure It was a single phase Franklin 7.5 hp pump (web Link) . I have since upgraded to a 10hp pump that is normally getting mid 500 with very little head pressure. I am not 100 % sure on the model number as the one the well man gave me was for a 3 phase 10 hp franklin pump. I really will not know for 100% certain on the 10 hp until I pull it one day.

JKB and I had been in a discussion about it over a year ago and he had some more efficient solutions for me if that pump ever fails. In the mean time at less than $500 a year in pumping it would not be cost efficient for me to pull and replace the well pump.

Keep in mind my volume is due to having a tremendous amount of water available and virtually very little head pressure. I get a lot of bang for my buck.

Tums, in my area, wells that are capable of supporting more than 2,000 gpm are possible. The aquifier is between 90' and 110' down, and static head in the well casing is approx. 13' below grade level.

Unfortunately 3-phase isn't available at my place, but JKB and I have discussed ways to run a 3-phase motor on single phase, and do it effeciently. I just have to find the most effecient well pump that I can.

For instance, there are 1/2 hp models that only pump 10 gpm or the more effecient ones pump 4x that amount.

I agree, for that electric cost per year, it's not cost effective to buy a new pump until that one bites the dust.

What diameter (opened the link - at least that's one question answered) is your well and how deep is it?

One more question.

The well drillers here have said that a stainless screen is more effecient than a plastic screen, but that it's a whole lot more $$. Do you know the material and size (length) of your screen?

Tums, is the pump on a separate meter or are these numbers from calculations?

Esshup 8" well is cased for 220' down on a site located about 180' above sea level. The screen I know is stainless, but I do not know the full details on it.

2old2Soon this well is AG metered to operate / bill at AG rate and is the only thing allowed on the meter.

Maybe this pick from filling the pond can give you an idea of the output.

Thanks Tums! 8" makes much more sense for that GPM than 6"!

Esshup Well over 8" cost more as there are some additional requirements for them here. Also many states now regulate wells with a 100,000 GPD output. So to avoid regulation your well should officially only put out 69 GPM. I will attach some of your Indiana info.

Indiana

General Information

In Indiana, there is a registration and reporting system for significant surface and groundwater withdrawals administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). A significant water withdrawal is defined as more than 100,000 gpd. The limit includes surface, groundwater or a combination. Permits may be required for water withdrawals under certain circumstances:
A permit is required for surface water withdrawals from a navigable waterway.
The INDR may designate restricted use area where withdrawals exceed or threaten to exceed natural replenishment. New users and users of more than 100,000 gpd must get permits to withdraw in restricted use areas.
The statute known as the Water Rights Law provides protection to owners of most small-capacity water wells from significant ground water withdrawal facilities.
High capacity facilities that cause failure of a smaller user can be required to provide an alternative water source.
The INDR may restrict high-capacity groundwater pumping if the withdrawal exceeds the recharge capacity of the aquifer

Regulatory System:
Registration and reporting for 100,000 gpd
Select permitting

Administering Agency: Indiana Department of Natural ResourcesWater Division
Statutes:
Water Resource Management Act (Ind. Code §§ 14-25-7 (1995))
Navigable Water Rights Act (Ind. Code §§ 14-29-1 (1995))

Administrative Code:
Other: Significant Water Withdrawal Facility Data

That's correct. The statue also says that it's not limited to just one well on a property that is capable of over 100,000 GPD, it's a combination of all the wells.

No matter what I do, I'm in that catagory - no way around it.

If a well goes dry, I'm pretty sure the statue says that any property within 1/2 mile of it that has a reportable well is responsible furnishing water. There's a couple of farmers 1/2 mile of here that have wells that are reportable too.

The one well on the property now is capable of 100 gpm, all that needs to be done is increase the size of the motor.

This area is not a restricted area.

I can't even fathom those numbers. Mine is 1/10 gpm.

Dave, when I ran the well into the pond for a test earlier this year, I pumped 25 gpm. 18 gpm leaked out.........

I can't imagine only getting what you get from the ground. That's 144 gallons per day, correct? It takes me less than 6 minutes to have that come out of my well.

Tums, I wouldn't change a thing unless you really had to. No reasonable payback for new equipment unless you absolutely had to. IIRC, your 3 phase voltage is a bit on the low end for the more standard 230 volt motors. Power company should be able to change tap's on the transformer to bump it up, but think the motor was 190 or 208 volts, and they tapped it out in that range. Most common industrial motors will do +/-10% on voltage fluctuations without harming the motor, but if it is extended run time, and either too low or too high, the motor will see an early grave.

Scott, Been a while since I dug into the well project for you. I have more free time now

Anyway, I think the last pump I put the numbers to was a 5HP 2 stage turbine from a company around Germany. Just going from memory, it would do 650GPM+ at 60Hz, but I think the low end for the head required was over 300GPM at about 1.8HP.

This is a pump-N-dump like Tums has with very little head pressure, so these types of situations, you can get a hell of a lot of water out of the ground on the cheap side, well, being electrically cheap.

This one requires an 8" casing, and those aren't cheap to install.

Esshup knows about the pipe mill project. I have (3) ABB ACS310 VFD's on this, plus a PF525 for position control (love those 525's)

Anyway, the ABB drives are for pumps and fans. Geared toward the Affinity Laws. We're running shielded VFD cable in cable trays along with shielded Ethernet, RS485 Modbus plus a bunch of 4-20ma analog stuff. It works in cable trays.

Big problem is, we have a 45' run of VFD cable to a 5HP blower and the drive would fault out in a ground fault condition when it powered up. Motor bad?, we disconnected the motor and still got the same fault. Hummm, bad cable? we replaced that twice, still faulted out. Had the cable megged, and no problems. Megged the motor and no problems. Tried a 45' chunk of bus drop cable, same thing. This sucks! Then we tried 14ga THHN wire laying loosely in the cable tray to the motor. That worked, but we can't leave it like this, needs to be hard piped, and that is a bunch of work in this scenario.

Get on the horn with our rep and ABB. They say shouldn't have any problems, but we are, and this sucked up a lot of time. Sent the serial numbers to ABB on the drives so they can investigate. Haven't heard back yet. They know the situation this is in, just running a blower, so we have it documented from ABB to disable the Ground Fault on this particular drive. It's just a parameter change you make that says the warranty is void if you disable this

The ground faults are way too sensitive on these with the latest firmware revision. Ya think they need to tone it back a bit

Thanx Tums, Sometimes the stated power consumption from a manufacturer are often “optimistic” at best and warrant validation. I just obtained a couple of power meters I plan to install on a few circuits to see my actual costs. As utility company’s move to the smart meters there are lots of the dumb ones available for free, or close to free.

1/10th GPM???? I think I can do that by myself.....it may take a few beers, but I think I could!

2Old2Soon,
The well pump motors are going to be a NEMA design. They will list the output HP, FLA (Full Load Amps) SF (Service Factor) and efficiency as most common. The power consumption of an electric motor is based on the load it is experiencing. That's pretty much it! Temp. can jump into the game, but if you sized it properly for the load with some wiggle room, it should really be consistent.

That being the case, all you would need to determine what's happening is an Amprobe meter where you can measure the amps and volt's to calculate watts. That will really do the trick to give you a good idea of what's happening.

What power meters/monitors did you get? Landis+Gyr have been making smart meters since at least the 60's. Basically, they are capable of communications. You can hook into these thru the printer port, RS232 serial, RS485 ModbusRTU, Analog and DNP (Distributed Network Protocol) 3.0 for Internet.

I have a manual on a new one that was installed a couple years ago, and the latest revision on this manual was in 1969. Power company is connected to this thru Internet on DNP. Only option I have to put the numbers where they need to be is Modbus. The power company already programmed this meter, and they are exclusive on DNP, so that's out.

OK, I'll really be boring you with the 4, 8 bit words I have to assemble into floats so they can see what's up. A float is a decimal creature (floating point), like 23.07, has a decimal place. Sometimes, not easy to do, depending on who wrote the output code and what you are using to re-assemble this so it matches perfectly. So far, they didn't like the price tag

I've got several of those older, dumb meters. When the campground was in operation, each site had its own meter, and paid accordingly for electricity used. Now they just sit there, unused, and I'm racking my brain trying to figure out a cool use for em'.

Tiny fish bowls.