Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Pumping Question

I am wanting to pump from a creek that is about 50 ft below my pond. I have a dayton pump that can pump appx 90 gpm at that. I am wondering about the best way to get the water from the creek though. It's spring fed and shallow unless it has rained. Does anyone know if I come about 20 ft from the creek and dig down lower than the water level in the creek would I enough water to install a well? It is a sand bottom creek. What type of well screen could I use. Any suggestions would be appreciated.thanks

Without knowing the geography of the soil, I'll go out on a limb.

I have a 4" well casing, that will support 100 gpm; BUT we put a double screen on the casing (instead of 5' there's 10').

Are you saying that your pump will pump 90 gpm with 50' head pressure?

I'd look into laying 4 or 5 well screens in the creek bed, cover them with 6" or so of sand and hooking that up to the pump. It'd be easier to clean the screens that way than if they were on the end of a well casing in the ground.

The pump I have is here.
http://www.drillspot.com/products/72122/Dayton_4UA76_Self_Priming_Centrifugal_Pump

Says it will pump 92 gpm at 50' head.
I went down to the sandbar area last night and dug around. It seems no matter where you dig,once you get to the level of the water in the creek there's water. Interesting idea essup. This is a fine sand with small gravel. Do you think I would have a lot of problems with clogging? I would like to put a pressure switch on this set up and also use it for watering the horses dogs etc. So it would be nice if I could make it freeze proof. I guess I could if I put the screen dead center of the creek because it never freezes there, then I would have to make sure I dug down 36" after the screen. What do you think? You said you have 4" well screen?

The well that I had put in was for the house, and I wanted to make sure that there would be enough water for running a sprinkler system, and for the pond if necessary. I only have a 1 hp submersible pump, which will pump 28 gpm. The driller doubled up on the well screen, saying that it'd take much longer to clog, and it would flow 100 gpm that way. The water level in the ground is 13' below ground level, although the well screens are at 66' depth to get into a good water vein.

It'll be hard to make that set-up freeze proof unless you insulate the water line within 3' of the ground surface, and insulate/heat the pump during the winter. My house bladder tanks are in a pit that's 5' deep, with concrete walls, a storage shed on top and the pit itself is insulated with 2" of foam in the winter. I have a 1500 watt infrared heater hooked up to a 34° thermostat for the winter as well.

While your pump has 2" in and out, for less strain on the pump due to friction losses, I would consider running bigger pipe, neck it down at the pump, and neck it back up once it leaves the pump. I believe those pump figures are without any pipe friction losses. Figure out how many feet of pipe you'll be using, and check the GPM. There might be a significant difference.

If you are going to use the pump to fill the pond, they last a lot longer if they run continually, and are not pressure regulated. I still haven't re-plumbed the bladder tanks, so when I run water to the pond, I lose all water pressure to the house.

Thanks for all the info! I did plan on building a pump house but I think I need to do some more thinking about it's intended purposes. I might mess around a little more this weekend. Ill let you know what I end up with. I might just rig up something temp for the summer now and go from there. Thanks again.

Esshup, you mentioned figuring out how many feet of pipe then go from there. I'm going to have 300 ft of pipe to pond.This will all be on the discharge side. About 50' vertical then the rest out to pond. I was just going to use some backwash hose for this? Can you help with figures? I just ordered some well screen from NC. Cheapest I could find and they were very helpful. Here's the site if someone is interested. I'm going to bury in the creek like you suggested.

http://www.bellappliance.com/pvc_wellscreens_pricing.htm

I'm not familiar with backwash hose, but take a look here If you click on design coefficient, it'll bring up a table with the number that you need to plug in. Just fill in the blanks and it'll do the work for you. Same thing with hydraulic diameter.

Worked great. Thanks. Looks like if I run 3" instead of 2" the loss drops to almost nothing compared to the 2". Thanks for all the help. I'll let you know how it all goes. I have the pump in place and tested but still waiting on my screens and now I need a lot of 3" pvc pipe.

If you are planning on using the PVC for a number of years, I suggest you bury it. I had some PVC sitting out in the sun a while back and when I went to use it, it shattered instead of cutting. It turns out that the white PVC doesn't have UV inhibitors in it, but the purple stuff does. If you can get paint to stick to it, that would be another option if you didn't want to bury it.

I use 2" poly pipe for my 3" gas-powered irrigation pump. It has lasted over 15 years without any signs of weathering. It is also somewhat flexible, especially if you lay the pipe on a warm day. We roll it up in about an 8' diameter roll each fall, and stretch it out each spring. If you are going uphill, be careful increasing the pipe size from the pump - less friction but more water exerting pressure back to the pump ( I think).

Does anyone know if thats true? The part about less friction but more pressure? Sounds like that could be right. I had a smaller pump before and it worked fine until you turned it off then it didnt have enough power to start again unless you drained the pipe that runs uphill. I appreciate everyones feedback so far. I think this time since I have the right pump and help it just might work:)
I tested the pump the other night to see if it would prime and it worked fine. Out of a 2" pipe it was shooting out about 5'...A lot of water from that pump but I want to make sure I size the pipe right so I get that type of volume once it gets to the top.

Ok, been thinking. Maybe that isnt true. If you think of it like this, lets say you had a 50' tall tank and I was pumping in to the bottom of the tank. You shouldnt get any more pressure than if I was pumping in to a 50' tall 2" pipe right? Still have the same amount of gravity pulling down on the water in to my 2" outlet on the pump. Again any feedback would help. RAH has me thinking and its too early in the morning for that.

You may be right. I was thinking of how the old miners used to take a stream on a hillside and run it through successively smaller diameter pipe. At the end the pressure was high enough to wash the hillside away from the gold. But maybe it does not work that way unless the water is running downhill? What you said above makes sense.

Yeah Ive seen them do that for running generators from water. I think theyre called pelton wheels. This has me stumped, interesting problem. I think we need to look at the head height more than volume though. Hopefully someone here knows the answer. Thanks RAH.

OK - forget about my comment about pressure from oversized main line.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/b912/step_8.html

See it was bugging you too. I missed that site. It reads to me that a column of water is .43 psi.....It doesnt say a column 2" or 3" or anything. I take that that no matter what size the column, the pressure is the same. Thanks a lot RAH. Looks like Ill be using 3" pvc. Ill let everyone know when its done and the outcome. Sometime next week.

a 3" pipe will carry 130 to 190 gpm 2" pipe will carry 45 to 75 gpm. On a tank you'll need the ft of head tank high / 2.3 ft =psi 50ft/2.3= 71.74 psi or 50f x .433 = 21.6psi at outlet of tank. now if the piping is running down hill we'll have to add gravity formula and I'm getting to old to remimber that lol good luck.

yep - It definately was bothering me too. I actually was a wiz at phisics in college, but time has taken its toll.

While none of us might know it all, I think we got the answer I needed. Thanks everybody.

When I was young I knew it all
As I got older I thought I knew it all
Now that I’m old I forgot it all

That's the great thing about the forum. While one person might not know the complete answer, everybody contributes a piece of the puzzle, and pretty soon it's solved.

Good answer esshup.

I find it quite a bit easier (for me and others) to stay away from technical issues and let the problem resolve in an easier, and more in-tune method for the person who asked, and others.

Nobody likes engineers

I love this forum, but remember, the earth used to be flat and the sun used to rotate around the earth based on consensus. Just an observation...

This might get moderated:

An engineer died and ended up in Hell. Soon, he became dissatisfied with the level of comfort in Hell, and began designing and building improvements. After a while, they had flush toilets, air conditioning, escalators. The engineer was a pretty popular guy.

One day God called to Satan and said with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in Hell?"

Satan replied, "Hey, things are great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."God exclaimed, "What? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake--he should never have gotten down there in the first place. Send him back up here."

"No way," replied Satan. "I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."

God threatened, "Send him back up here now or I'll sue!"

Satan laughed and answered, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"

You can lump me in the engineering group.....