Getting More From Your Pond Pump For Less

 

Every pond pump driven by electricity is fitted with a motor. The motor is normally rated in watts or kilowatts. This is a measure of the amount of energy the motor can generate at absolute maximum and at 100% efficiency.

Pond pumps best pipe to use is flexible ribbed hose

Make sure the delivery pipe from the pump is not kinked or is being restricted by a build up of algae inside the pipe. Restrictions in pipes eventually translate into reduced flow and possibly higher electric bills.

Have you ever tried carrying a bucket of water up a flight of stairs? It can be a bit tiring. Now try carrying 2 buckets of water up the same stairs and you will feel extra tired ... in this second instance you have used twice as much energy to lift twice as much water to the SAME height. Now try carrying those 2 buckets of water up a narrow set of stairs cluttered with boxes and other stuff that makes you change your straight line position and you'll have to work even harder to overcome the "resistance" in getting to the top.

Pump less water higher or pump more water lower ... this is basis of how a submersible pond pump works. It's that simple ...

Let's go back to any pump in a pond environment. Normally you want to pump water up to a waterfall and when you do this you will have noticed the water flow is less than what was coming out at ground or at a lower level. This is because the pump has a motor operating at its maximum operating point. In practical terms this means if you want to lift the water higher than the pond surface then with a fixed amount of energy the pump compensates by reducing the amount of water it can lift.

You can thus see that any pump will share its energy ... some to flow and some to lift. The more the lift the less the flow and vice versa.

Every pump box states MAXIMUM HEAD and MAXIMUM FLOW. What do these bits of information means and why are they pretty useless bits of information?

MAXIMUM SUBMERSIBLE PUMP HEAD

The height at which flow STOPS ... eg if this figure is 6 feet then at a height anywhere between 0 and 5.9 feet there will be some, but different amounts of, water flow. However at 6 ft there will be NONE. Remember whenever you talk about pump head it is the height measured from the water surface and not the bottom of the pond. The pump head you need will be the same whether your pond is 100 feet deep or 1 foot deep.

MAXIMUM SUBMERSIBLE PUMP FLOW

This happen at the level of the pond surface and is the flow with no pipe attached to the pump.

As you now understand the energy from a pump's motor is shared between flow (actually mass) of water and the height (head) to which it must be pumped. In a real pond situation it becomes a bit more complicated because when water flows through a pipe, or via a "T" piece, bend, fountain nozzle, or through a valve etc some energy is required to overcome friction losses in these different parts of the system. Once more because the pump's motor (energy output) is fixed it means that the water flow is reduced for any specific height pumped. We refer to these "things" as flow restrictions.

How To Improve any pond pump's flow

In practice you need to remove or lower the impact of any restrictions to flow. You therefore will get better pump performance if you do the following ...

  • Use widest diameter flexible or rigid pipe you can

  • Use shortest possible pipe length always and avoid any bends and especially sudden changes in direction.

  • Do not kink the pipe (a big problem with thin walled plastic pipe) and protect from light that will encourage algae growth inside the pipe.

  • Do not use valves, T pieces, Y pieces, sharp bends etc in your pipework if you can avoid it.

  • Prevent build-up of algae inside the pipe by using NON-transparent piping.

  • When you use stepped connectors cut off the smaller diameter steps.

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