Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry New Well Pump Opinion

AS JKB and I have discussed before I have a 4" 3phase 10hp dinosaur well pump. Found out this weekend mother nature has provided me with some extra electricity. I have a crew going out today to look at the electrical to start getting all of that back up. Do not know yet if the protection saved my pump or not so I may be pulling the well pump also. The question I have to you well / pump GURU's is what would you go back with if it was you?

Well pump is 220' down. The well with water just a few feet from the surface of the well & goes down hill fast into a 8" pipe so there is not very much head pressure to come into play.

Edit: I am not opposed to going back to a 7.5hp pump as they served me well in the past.

I'd look at the Grundfos brand of pumps and do your research on the high efficiency pumps, especially with your low head. The amount of water that they can pump per HP is tremendous if you get the correct pump side to the motor.

BUT, with a 4" well casing, I was told that even double screening the casing, I could only get 100 gpm from the well.

My aquifer will support in excess of 2,000 gom if the casing and pump/motor is sized correctly.

Reference point for you....I have a submerged 1.5 HP constant pressure variable speed pump in my 5 inch well and get 35 gpm at 70 psi at full flow. I went this route to save on electric, eliminate the pressure tank and eliminate the pressure fluctuations associated with a pressure tank. My pressure varies 2 psi.

+1 on the Grundfos, but think you might have a difficult time finding a pump/motor combination in your voltage. That is if you need to replace it.

IIRC, your pump is a Franklin and your well casing is 6" and you have 190VAC 3 phase service.

I think where we left off is that if you ever had to replace the pump that you might want to take advantage of the Affinity Laws.

I did save all of your info, but that was 2 hard drives and a smoked laptop ago. I'll see if I can find it.

If anything, I would see if the power company can change the taps on the transformer and bump your service to 240V or 480V. Much wider selection of pump/motor combinations. Better just see about 240V if you intend to go the VFD route tho. 480V is prone to reflective wave phenomenon and corona discharge on longer runs, which requires additional line reactors and expensive VFD cable between the VFD and motor.

Thanks guys. I am looking at doing something different if I have to replace the pump. I have been researching doing a solar cell with a high GPM Grundfos pumping.

JKB Electric V is no longer an issue. I have already had additional electric added earlier in the year. I needed 110 & 220 hookups available for the handicap event I hosted back in May. The Electric company was nice enough knowing why I needed it & hooked it up on the same farm rate account.

ABB has a solar VFD out for remote pumping applications. It should have been released to the US markets a few months ago. It's powered -via- solar thru the DC Bus and has all that advanced MPPT stuff to control the solar rig. It can also run from AC as well, so when your solar is down, switch to AC.

It's kinda neat, but I would probably stick with solar to AC, then to the drive, which is more complicated, but you loose a number of parameters and control features with the solar drive that I could not live without. Guess I'm too picky.

Just got kicked off on another project today and I'm using a 10hp ABB ACS310 VFD for one of the pressure blowers. About the simplest drive on the planet to set up. Just punch in your motor data and hit the start button. 527 bucks.

In the end it turned the pump is running fine. Had to replaced all the electrical boxes. The master on off box was melted to were it was hot all the tile. The well starter box was toasted and the breaker panel recently installed had a lot of damage. $1200 later it was pumping water fine.

I'm betting that you are glad that you found that out sooner rather than later!!