Solar powered pond pumps

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ColeyS1

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Bit of a long shot but does anyone have any experience with these? I'm making a self contained water feature at the moment and having it movable and without mains voltage would be a huge bonus. It'd be worth paying twice the price of a normal one for the sheer convenience.
I'm guessing one with a large seperate/movable solar panel would be most efficient other than that I'm not sure what to look for. It would need to pump 1050mm high.
Cheers
Coley

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If the pump is a decorative feature and you don't mind periodic failure solar is OK. If you require water aeration for fish, solar in my experience is hopeless.
 
My parents installed a solar-powered water feature a while back. Great idea in principle, but not so good in practice. At moderate light levels it performed well and produced a pleasing fountain effect. However, whenever the sun came out the power picked up and the pump went into overdrive. Water shot high in the air and most of it landed outside the reservoir. This was even worse when the wind blew. The nearby flowerbed benefited hugely, but the pump did not. I used to move the solar panel alignment so it only received glancing sunlight, but then when the sun went in it would stop altogether. Kept me amused for hours on family visits, but I couldn't recommend one.

Hope this helps.

Pete
 
I put a solar powered pump in our garden. It's only small and powered by a small caravan battery charging panel on our roof. I started off with a fountain type jet, but as said above, in a strong wind the water blew out of the trough. So I put a pot on its side so that it spills into the trough with the water being pumped into the back of it. . It's quite delightful and of course the water will be blown away unless you have enough surface area for it not to. :shock: Rocket science??

Mind you, we have slightly more sun here that you lot up there 8) 8)

I searched all over the place this side of the cut and finished up getting one from Blighty because they weren't available here, but it was dammed expensive. I'll get a couple of photos and see if I can dig out the supplier and price a bit later on.
 
Thanks for your thoughts guys, it's much appreciated. I had a cheapo all in one kit in mind, but following your advice will look at something different.
I was thinking of a deep cycle 12v car battery but was wondering how often it'd need recharging. Once a month really wouldn't be much of an issue for the added portability.

Coley

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I've been gathering like a womble from the tip for a few months
301d3087520a099ae431523f6fc6c7c8.jpg

Bowling ball was a quid
Could believe my luck when I spotted this last week !
f6d5b1f3e0a43a309c167a4822f5724f.jpg

He wanted 8 quid for the troughs ( later discovered they were a waterfeature) and chucked in the blue tank for another couple quid.
I like old skool retro stuff, the biggest expense so far has been this little fella for..... £31 :D
a7b7d980a6abb5f9c6651a0ec97f584a.jpg

I guessing a few peeps may have an idea of what I have in mind........

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Coley, what's the budget for the pump? I've not been in the aquatic hobby for some years now but I remember that Tunze used to make some 12v powered pumps. They won't be cheap...
 
I was hoping 200 for the pump and battery might do it. I'd rather spend extra now to buy something decent, then get something that only works now and again. I just remembered I've actually got a spare car battery. It's not a deep cycle one but should be o.k to get it up and running.

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There is one pump in the Tunze silence range that runs from a low voltage power supply, they used to do some sort of battery backup adaptor as well I think.

I don't know if any of this is suitable for what you want, but it might be worth some investigation/google searching.

A quick look around puts the pump at £150-160ish.

HTH
 
Thanks for the info on the pumps ;) would the pumps they sell be suitable for a water feature ? First impressions are they seem more aimed at keeping fishys alive in a pond. Sorry if I've caused confusion by asking for a pond pump.

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It's a water pump, can't tell you if it pumps the right amount of water for your application - perhaps an email to Tunze UK might be in order.

As ever I can only show you the door, it is you that must walk through it :)
 
No skills":faa8lcu4 said:
It's a water pump, can't tell you if it pumps the right amount of water for your application - perhaps an email to Tunze UK might be in order.

As ever I can only show you the door, it is you that must walk through it :)
Click to expand...
Very well put ;) I'll drop em a quick email and see what they suggest.

Coley

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paultnl":1v76z10j said:
If you use something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/30A-12V-24V-S ... xy63FS5kTM you can avoid many of the issues caused by varying solar energy throughout the day. The battery would also allow for some nighttime running.
Click to expand...
That seems like a very useful thing to use if I'm going the solar route to charge the battery . To be honest if I can use a car battery and only need to charge it every now and then I might leave the solar panel for now.

I've got a few solar powered lights that are really useful, only issue is they are very unreliable . Perhaps at a later date I could get a proper decent solar panel that would comfortably power/ charge the pump but also be have enough juice to power extra things like lights or a few extra pumps. I really like to buy stuff that seems overkill at the time but covers me for future additions.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll send the email now

Coley

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Just had an email back from Roger at Tunze-

"While we have a pump that would work, it would be overkill, though it could be turned down, you would need the items listed below.  This pump will work on 12-24V, it needs 24V for the full rated performance, at 12V the head pressure and flow rate would be roughly halved."

This is the pump he thought would be overkill

http://charterhouse-aquatics.com/shop/a ... ps/tunze-4

It would certainly be churning around plenty of water !



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Most if not all flow rate figures (for aquarium stuff) are taken at 0 head height, if that's not the case then they usually show a flow graph to show what flow at what head height.

Max head height is exactly that, it will push water to that height but not at any great rate.

Water flow from the average aquarium pump can be throttled back a bit with a valve in the outlet pipe work, not too much mind or you can end up knackering the pump.

Again this information may or may not be of any pineapple use what so ever :D
 

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