Which Pump For Garden Sprinklers?

[stgrhe]

We are currently building a one story house south of Hua Hin in a development that has its own well. For the house's main supply we intend to use the Grundfos model CH4-50PT (recommended by Grundfos for our situation), which is fitted with a 25 litres pressure tank and a pressure switch.

The garden will fitted with 10 pop-up sprinklers, fed by its own pump from a separate irrigation water tank. We want this system to be separate from the house's water supply system because we intend to collect rain water in the irrigation tank for use. The irrigation water pipes will be either of 3/4" or 1", whatever is recommended.

I need help selecting a suitable pump (no Chinese crap) for the sprinkler system.

[bkkbill]

Why would you not go back to Grundfos as they have pumps for all different requirements. That way you have one supplier to deal with and one with excellent pumps.

[stgrhe]

Why would you not go back to Grundfos as they have pumps for all different requirements. That way you have one supplier to deal with and one with excellent pumps.

For price reason. It is in my opinion an overkill to use a Grundfos pump for the sprinklers and I'd rather spend the extra on something more important as the budget is limited.

[MJP]

Try this set up. Thai jars filling from both groundwater and rainwater harvesting (posh term for guttering from the roof). The jars sit on soakaways made from concrete rings, go down about 2m. When full, water flows out the top, round the sides and into the soakaway, looks nice. I have picutres of the construction somewhere if you want to see. Thai jars are around 750-1000 Baht.

The little Goldfish pump there is inadequate for sprinklers, only 70 litres/min flow rate and no ooomff at all, but it has been reliable. Suggest a 120 L/min one for about 2500 Baht and a 0.5" hose would do it well. Try to find one with a float switch and set it at the right level in the Thai jar. Also you can plumb these jars together so as the one fills up, so do the others, as you can see I've been too lazy to fit it up thus far, hence the blue water pipe leaning up against the wall.

Edited November 11, 2009 by MJP

[stgrhe]

Thanks MJP for your suggestion, however, I will use a dedicated underground tank (already installed), which fed from the rain gutters and from the pool's back-wash filter. Since my pool will be a Magnapool I will be able to reuse its back-washed water for the garden irrigation if it is blended five to one. With this set up I will still have water for the garden during the dry season without wasting too much of the well water. So my question remains, which pump would you or someone else recommend.

[merijn]

I'm using a Grundfos MQ45 ( auto start pump ) pump for my garden which is fed from a seperate tank filled by my deep well pump. Works very good only place a rain protector over the Grundfos pump as mine broke after one year due to rain water comming into the electronics.

[Beardog]

I would go with a Grundafos. We have 2 rai of irrigation running off of a 300 mitsubishi. It only puts out a little over 300-400 liters & I had to break up the irrigation into 15 valves to make the system work. No body can match the power that the Grundafos puts out. You could go for an irrigation pump setup, but you would have to calculate how many (if not all) sprinklers to do at once as some of the irrigation pumps just do the full tilt boogie at 1+hp wide open The Grundofos would give you a controlled 800 liters needed for most sprinkler heads including pop- up birds for major lawn areas. Good luck. In hind-site I would have set up my irrigation on a Grundafos as it took a lot of time re-designing the system & breaking down all the zones to halves to make it work.

Good luck.....I think Waters edge provided a link back in the farm forum when I was asking about how to set my zones up about 4 pages back Beardog under irrigation post. The ticket is 800 liters that way it will adequately power just about any head.

[stgrhe]

I know the Grundfos MQ45-series are more or less designed for irrigation applications and perhaps I should reconsider and take a second look at a that series again.

For the house's main supply I have already selected the Grundfos CH4-50PT.

Thanks guys for your inputs.