Steve&mem

Now that's not a bad idea, I shall be be getting some of that.

. What makes you think your wife chewed on the wires? I think it was while she was having a melt down when she couldn't find her dog.

For those that are interested here is a diagram of the float set-up that control the pump. I bought the control cabinet from lazada and the seller sent me this diagram for setting up. The pump may be a bit over kill, 1HP twin impeller's, it moves the water easily the 80 meters down the garden.

Crossy is bang on the money about the pump not just sucking water, When we were building the house we had a pump sucking the water from the main for the builder's, besides water we got mud, leaves, and bits of wood and god knows what else. The pump didn't last long as it was always sucking air. It was our builder that suggested we put the in ground tank in the garden.

Tried that, half the village doing the same sucking water with a pump, if your not monitoring it your sucking air most of the time. This method I don't have to keep checking it, but yes I use 2 pumps to get water, the wife uses lots in her organic vegetable garden. The above ground tank is actually 5 tanks totaling 10,000 liter's.

The in ground is needed because the incoming water has no pressure (80% of the time). we are luckily if we can get a head of water of more than 1 meter. The water also comes with a lot of sediment from the lake, this we filter out with a deep bed water filter when we pump it to the above ground tank.

The top has a concrete lid that's a good fit and there were a few dead ants around were the cable was laying on top of the plastic lid, no rat droppings, that's why I thought the ants, I'm hopeful that the conduit that I have put in place now will stop the problem again. The Thai way of not protecting electric cable is commonly used around these part's.

So there I was enjoying a late afternoon beer, wife comes to tells me that the pump at the in-ground water tank is running and were short of water and it happened few times before she says. So first check, is there water in the tank. So I move the cable to the float switch so I can open the tank. The shock that I got was the worst I had ever felt. After I had calm down and finished yelling. I went and turned off the power. Here’s a pic of the said murderess cable. Only 2 year old. Ant Job is my first thought, But mustn’t rule out the wife, you can never be too sure. So the repair is going to get expensive, Pump mechanical seal shot, looks like a long time leak. The 80 meter cable run from the house needs uprating (heath Robinson installation) the power was switched on and off by a second float switch in the above ground tank near the house. I decided to renew all the cable and a new conduit along the garden wall linking both float switches together to proper new control box and making sure the cable at the in ground thank was also in conduit.