Irrigation and Gas Powered Water Pump Questions

[hunterridgefarm]

Okay, I have several questions. Feel free to answer all, some, or none. Since I have dial-up at home it may be Monday 12/5 before I can reply.

I am putting in an irrigation system for a small greenhouse, raised beds and small section of yard. I will be mainly pumping out of water storage tanks through sprinklers and drip lines. Reason being I have a well and it will not support this.

First set of questions is: My farm supply has a Pacer 2 inch flow, 195 GPM, 205CC or 5.5 HP Briggs water pump for $269.00. Seems like a good price.

Do you agree? Any one have any experience with this pump?

This link is not my farm supplier but the type of pump I am looking at.

2 In Self-Priming Centrifugal Pump - 195 gpm | Orscheln Farm and Home



He also has one he used to pump liquid fertilizer that has developed a leak. It looses about a gallon every half hour, possibly more with water. He will sell this to me for $75.00; good price? How hard is it to replace seals in this type of pump? Can you replace the pump for low $$? I am thinking about buying both?

The reason I have 4ac of produce and pumpkins I will plant this year and could use those to irrigate. And the river borders this field and two pumps would be handy.

The water tanks:
1100 gal $572.00
465 gal $350.00
300 gal $295.00

I am trying to decide on buying one 1100 gal and one 465 gal or two of the 465 gal. Leaning more towards one 1100 and one 465.

The plan is to set the 1100gal at the greenhouse and raised bed location. Put the 465 gal on a trailer or bed of the F250 fill the 465gal from the river on my property and pump into the 1100 gal tank, 2 trips. The 1100 gal will be full and the 465 gal will be mostly a transfer tank. Then I will pump directly from the tank to the sprinklers and drip lines as needed.

I thought about 2 of the 465 gal but my tractor will not lift 3800lbs out of the truck (weight of the water) and I don't want to tie my equipment trailer up with one of the tanks.

Any problem with the F250 hauling 3800lbs in the bed? Will only be traveling 200 yards on the HWY.

What do you think about this set up...any suggestions?

Thanks
David

 

[cjfling]

Since he was pumping fertilizer, the seals may not be the only issue with the used one. Fertilizer is corrosive and I'm wondering if the whole inside of the pump would be rusty? As far as replacing the pump, I've found it's not economical or sometimes even possible to find the part. The pump can cost up to and beyond half the cost of the whole unit.

 

[boomer1025]

3800 lbs is alot of weight for a 250. I think I would try and find an old trailer or wagon and mount the tank on it. Wagon would be the best, block the wheels & unhook. Heavy enough wagon and you could put the 1100 gal tank on it and only make 1 trip, as long as you have something to pull it with.

 

[SandburRanch]

I suggest checking on parts availability before buying either pump. A lack of parts availability may be why the $75.00 pump is for sale.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

Parts seem to be available online.

Not sure about the rust from pumping liquid fert but will check it out. Most likely will only buy the new pump.

I may find a cheap trailer to haul the water tank on. Not sure about 3800# in the bed of the truck...

 

[Jerry/MT]

Okay, I have several questions. Feel free to answer all, some, or none. Since I have dial-up at home it may be Monday 12/5 before I can reply.

I am putting in an irrigation system for a small greenhouse, raised beds and small section of yard. I will be mainly pumping out of water storage tanks through sprinklers and drip lines. Reason being I have a well and it will not support this.

First set of questions is: My farm supply has a Pacer 2 inch flow, 195 GPM, 205CC or 5.5 HP Briggs water pump for $269.00. Seems like a good price.

Do you agree? Any one have any experience with this pump?

This link is not my farm supplier but the type of pump I am looking at.

2 In Self-Priming Centrifugal Pump - 195 gpm | Orscheln Farm and Home



He also has one he used to pump liquid fertilizer that has developed a leak. It looses about a gallon every half hour, possibly more with water. He will sell this to me for $75.00; good price? How hard is it to replace seals in this type of pump? Can you replace the pump for low $$? I am thinking about buying both?

The reason I have 4ac of produce and pumpkins I will plant this year and could use those to irrigate. And the river borders this field and two pumps would be handy.

The water tanks:
1100 gal $572.00
465 gal $350.00
300 gal $295.00

I am trying to decide on buying one 1100 gal and one 465 gal or two of the 465 gal. Leaning more towards one 1100 and one 465.

The plan is to set the 1100gal at the greenhouse and raised bed location. Put the 465 gal on a trailer or bed of the F250 fill the 465gal from the river on my property and pump into the 1100 gal tank, 2 trips. The 1100 gal will be full and the 465 gal will be mostly a transfer tank. Then I will pump directly from the tank to the sprinklers and drip lines as needed.

I thought about 2 of the 465 gal but my tractor will not lift 3800lbs out of the truck (weight of the water) and I don't want to tie my equipment trailer up with one of the tanks.

Any problem with the F250 hauling 3800lbs in the bed? Will only be traveling 200 yards on the HWY.

What do you think about this set up...any suggestions?

Thanks
David

Your F250 is most likely rated for something like 8000 lbs GVW (check the owners manual)and empty it weighs around 6000lbs. 485 g of water weighs 3860 lbs plus the weight of the tank. That's puts it over the rating and overloading it regularly and driving it on rough ground is not a good idea.

Is there anyway you can pump out of the river into a tank and then gravity that down to where you use it? Then you'll only need one tank and the truck haul is out ofthe picture.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

Is there anyway you can pump out of the river into a tank and then gravity that down to where you use it? Then you'll only need one tank and the truck haul is out ofthe picture.

Don't think so...here is a pic taken of the river from the top of the ridge where the house is.

 

[KentT]

Don't think so...here is a pic taken of the river from the top of the ridge where the house is.

Yep, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were on top of a pretty big ridge...

 

[boomer1025]

Don't think so...here is a pic taken of the river from the top of the ridge where the house is.

Yep a tractor an trailer or wagon is your best bet or alot bigger truck

 

[crbr]

Thanks for the pictures.

 

[sparc]

Don't think so...here is a pic taken of the river from the top of the ridge where the house is.

What is the elevation difference from the river to the location of the 1100 gal tank?

from the pic it looks to be about 40 or 50 feet, but hard to tell.

 

[LazySusanFarms]

Are you going to use any kind of filtration? Could spend a lot of time unplugging drip emitters.

 

[crbr]

Good thread

 

[hunterridgefarm]

What is the elevation difference from the river to the location of the 1100 gal tank?

from the pic it looks to be about 40 or 50 feet, but hard to tell.

Elevation from the river to the top of the ridge is 200-250 ft.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

Are you going to use any kind of filtration? Could spend a lot of time unplugging drip emitters.

I will have 2 filters on the intake side of the pump. Actually it is a strainer on the end of the hose/pipe that is in the water and a 2 stage filter on the intake side of the pump.

 

[studor]

Instead of worrying about transporting the water by truck or trailer, why not pump into and out of multiple tanks? Many years ago on drill rigs we used to pump into barrels and then pump out of those barrels into others in order to get water to the rigs that were a long distance and at higher elevation than a single pump could handle. You could use say three tanks and as many pumps as you could afford and just transfer from one tank to the other until you reach your final storage location. At my country place I was using forty five gallon drums to move water to my garden which is a fair distance from my pond -- gave up, bought another pump and now pump into one of the barrels and then into the four barrels by the garden -- entire process takes less time than it used to take to do one barrel. My next move is to buy larger water tanks. The multiple tank process also acts a bit like settling ponds -- the water at the end has less crud because it settles in the tanks

 

[Verticaltrx]

One thing you must consider about this type of pump is if it can handle pumping at higher than normal pressures for extended periods of time. Most of these pumps are meant for pumping water unrestricted and will bog down or overheat if to much restriction is placed on the output. With that said, there are certain pumps that are made for this use and have higher pressure output.

I have a small 1" Honda water pump that I use for watering my garden and it works great for powering 3-4 standard sprinklers. It isn't designed for real high back pressure use, but better than most. I have to run it at 3/4 throttle to keep it from lugging, since it can only push so much water through the sprinklers at a time. With more sprinklers it could probably be run full throttle.

As for your F-250 hauling 3800lbs, that all depends on how it is set up (year, GVWR, spring package, etc). There are many configurations on these trucks that can greatly affect the payload. Some F-250's have a light GVWR and payload capacity closer to an F-150, others are closer to an F-350. I have an '88 F-250 with the high GVW package, factory overload springs, etc and 3800lbs would be a pretty good load, but not overloaded. With that said, my father has a '99 F-250, same GVWR but lighter springs and no overloads, it would be riding on the bump stops with that much weight. If you are worried about it a small trailer would be a good option.

 

[Bdavis]

My Brother-in-law developed a pretty nice system using these 250 gal plastic containers ( the ones that have the wire cage around them - don't know what they are called). They had soap in them originally. A guys was selling them for 50.00 bucks a piece so he picked up several.

Anyway he used his pond and a gas powered trash pump to fill the containers
Only took about 3 minutes to fill a container. He had his rows on a slope and would use his tractor and forks to water every couple of days.
He raised some nice corn last year even thouh we had a severe drought
so his system did work

 

[tpulley]

I deliberated over a gas pump vs a submersible pump early in the year. If you have electricity, you may want to consider submersible pumps. You can lay them directly into the water source (there is a caveat to that though, it still needs to run through a piece of pipe).

I am starting a upick operation I have over 5 acres of "crops". I chose drip for a few reasons. 1. Its cheaper in the long run. 2. It is better for the plants. 3. It actually takes less water. 4. You can run a lot more irrigation at once. You can do fertilization and chemicalization from the same setup. Its soooooo easy, even a caveman can do it. :laughing:

If it sounds like something you would be interested in PM me and we can discuss.