Thread: Help Needed with Water Pump Advice

Hoping some of you folk with more knowledge than me can help. Bit out of my depth to be honest.
We want to pump water from the creek, roughly 70 meters, and uphill to the water tank which is about 6 meters above the creek. This is out at the hut we've been restoring
Was just going to buy a portable 4 stroke pump with 2 inch inlet and outlet, and some lay-flat hose., The one Im looking at is rated 5.5 HP and capacity of 30m3 per hour
Any advice or suggestions would be great
Thanks

What I'm asking is whether a pump with this capacity is enough, given the distance and the lift

I'm pumping 90m elevation about 500m with 25mm pipe with a 4 panel solar system.
I measured it the other and at the tank doing 300l an hour.
Not heaps but enough as 30,000l tank

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Originally Posted by Bos

Hoping some of you folk with more knowledge than me can help. Bit out of my depth to be honest.
We want to pump water from the creek, roughly 70 meters, and uphill to the water tank which is about 6 meters above the creek. This is out at the hut we've been restoring
Was just going to buy a portable 4 stroke pump with 2 inch inlet and outlet, and some lay-flat hose., The one Im looking at is rated 5.5 HP and capacity of 30m3 per hour
Any advice or suggestions would be great
Thanks

How much fall do you have in the creek - can you fit a ram pump?

You need the pump curve. Some are designed for pressure (lift), others are rated for flow. Some can do both. HP rating is not enough to work on. That said, 6m lift is bugger all. There may be more head lost in the lines. What size line are you using. 2" is pretty large if you're filling just a tank. 30m3/hr is 8l/s. That's a slab of beer every second.

Originally Posted by kiwijames

You need the pump curve. Some are designed for pressure (lift), others are rated for flow. Some can do both. HP rating is not enough to work on. That said, 6m lift is bugger all. There may be more head lost in the lines. What size line are you using. 2" is pretty large if you're filling just a tank. 30m3/hr is 8l/s. That's a slab of beer every second.

A very quick look also has a 2" steel pipe giving 1.8m of head via frictional losses at 3.5m/s for 30m3/hr. This maybe an ask for the pump if you have it trying to suck up the hill as most need +ve NPSH to function correctly. This does not allow for any valves or a check in the line which you will most probably need to keep it primed. If you can leave the pump at the creek it would be easier.

Originally Posted by hotbarrels

How much fall do you have in the creek - can you fit a ram pump?

I run a ram pump in our creek a biggish one 4" drive pipe.
But a young guy knocked one of these up.
They work.
Neighbour a piddly little one 1/2" fittings that beats away.
https://www.instructables.com/Hydraulic-Ram-Pump/

Hi BOS,
As Kiwijames pointed out the pump specs are critical to get something that will do the job.
70 metres head equates to 7 Bar pressure.
Many of the cheap petrol driven pumps seem to have a max head of around 30 metres and max suction of 6-7 metres.
You don’t want to be at the limit of what the pump was designed to do or you will be disappointed as wear or price point manufacturing stop it working.
There are pumps that will do that head no problem but often more expensive twin impeller fire pumps.
The suggested water ram would probably work fine if you had time to make it or possibly consider a small AC electric water pump and plug into a portable generator you may already have. Some of the old brown brothers or prices bulldozer pumps did high heads and they pop up on TM from time to time.
Either way a foot valve on the suction line is a must and a priming T at the inlet would help when you go to use it after an extended period.
Good luck

Appreciate all the advice, and thanks Hugo for the tip re the foot valve. Im assuming this is the same as a non-return valve so that both the pump and the suction pipe can be primed without any loss of water back into the creek. Seems these new pumps dont like to run dry at all
I'm thinking we'll place the pump on the gravel beside the creek so the uphill 'suck' out of the creek to the pump would only be 500mm max, over 2 meters. From there its about 60 - 65 m to the tank and uphill about 6 m

Originally Posted by Hugo

Hi BOS,
As Kiwijames pointed out the pump specs are critical to get something that will do the job.
70 metres head equates to 7 Bar pressure.
Many of the cheap petrol driven pumps seem to have a max head of around 30 metres and max suction of 6-7 metres.
You don’t want to be at the limit of what the pump was designed to do or you will be disappointed as wear or price point manufacturing stop it working.
There are pumps that will do that head no problem but often more expensive twin impeller fire pumps.
The suggested water ram would probably work fine if you had time to make it or possibly consider a small AC electric water pump and plug into a portable generator you may already have. Some of the old brown brothers or prices bulldozer pumps did high heads and they pop up on TM from time to time.
Either way a foot valve on the suction line is a must and a priming T at the inlet would help when you go to use it after an extended period.
Good luck

He has only 6m vertical plus line losses. With a foot valve added I think it will struggle if it's not at the creek.

Apologies to the more intelligent out there.
Somehow I missed the 6 metre total head and ran off with the 70 metres in my head as the total lift. It should be easy to find a pump that will do that as long as the suction is within spec

So just as a final conclusion to all this, we bought a small 1.5 inch (40mm) pump with a 3 m suction and 70 m of lay-flat hose. Had to cut about 8 m of the layflat so total distance from the pump to the tank was 60 odd m and about 7 m high
Primed the pump and the suction hose (with a foot valve fitted) and cranked her up. Pump was on the gravel next to the creek so height from creek to pump would only have been 1 meter or less
Started second pull and took just short of 15 minutes to fill 1100 litres
Pretty awesome really. Now just need to make a wire type jenny to wind up the lay-flat. Next trip I'll post some pic's

Originally Posted by mimms2

Go see your local vollies (rural fire)... they'll show you how to roll up, and roll out, layflat.

Thats probably where he got the Jenny idea from...

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