Thursday, September 07, 2006

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One of the major aspects of the design that we had to get right was the capacity of the water pump which we were going to use.

If the pump was too weak, then we would not have been able to achieve the desired rate of water flow from the top slot. Any pump which had been installed and then found to be inadequate would be a non-returnable item and as such would have been money wasted.

If the pump was too powerful then the surplus pressure would have to be vented off somewhere otherwise there would have been the risk of 'stressing' the pump and seals.

"But how to calculate the desired flow rate?!"

What I did was quite simple but worked well. After connecting all of the pipe work I screwed on to the waterfall feeder tube a common 'male' hose pipe fitting.

I connected my garden hose to the fitting and turned on my tap slowly until I achieved the desired effect. Without disturbing the tap setting I then disconnected the hose and allowed the water to flow freely into a 10 Litre bucket. Whilst the bucket was filling up I timed it.

It took 30 seconds to fill.

From this experiment I was able to determine that the desired flow rate was 20 Litres a minute at a height or 'Head' of approximately 1.4 metres.

After some consultation with the guy in the water feature shop, it was decided to go for a pump with a 30 litre per minute capacity. This would allow us to increase the flow if we desired or even run a second feature.

Basically the advise is to get a pump which exceeds the required capacity.

You can always reduce the output by bleeding off the excess , but you cannot increase the output of a pump if you later find it to be inadequate!

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