Pump info needed for unusual installation.

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mexicodiesel

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Here's the situation. I have a spring located at an altitude of 6,600 ft. We plan on building a cistern there to catch the water. We need to pump the water up to the top of a mountain at an altitude of 7,200 ft and at a distance of .8 of a mile away. There will be another cistern located there also. I need to know what type of pump would be best to do this and the recommended pipe to use-black poly or metal. Would we need to consider another tank and pump in between the spring and top of the mountain?
This system will provide water to a Tarahumara Indian village deep in the Sierra Madres Mountains.
Any information or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Ryan Maness
Highways and Hedges Ministries
Creel, Mx.

Pictures of this ongoing water project can be seen here:
http://www.downinmexico.org/sanluis.html
 

Valveman

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A submersible in the cistern is a good way to lift the 600'. Figure GPM required, check friction loss in what ever kind and size of pipe you decide on, add the 600', and size the pump. No electricity? Generator?
 

Bob NH

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Figure out how many gallons per day you need and use the smallest pump that will do the job. That will save on the cost of the pipe. I suggest a 5 GPM rated pump. A Goulds 5GS15 1.5 HP pump will deliver about 3.5 GPM and a 5GS20 2 HP pump will deliver a bit more than 5 GPM through a 1" Schedule 80 PVC pipe. http://www.goulds.com/pdf/7310.pdf

The 600 ft of rise plus pressure loss in the pipe is about 700 ft of head, or about 300 psi. That is higher than most polyethylene pipe can handle. You could use Schedule 80 PVC or steel. I would probably used Schedule 80 PVC because it is lower cost than steel and will not corrode. Friction loss is 1.2 psi per 100 ft at 5 GPM.

You could use Schedule 80 all the way (my recommendation) or use Schedule 40 for the last half of the trip up the hill.

If you need to run a generator it may be more economical to use a larger pump so you can run the pump for a shorter time.

Water from a spring should be filtered and disinfected. If it is not disinfeced it will grow algae in the cistern at the top of the hill. Disinfection (usually chlorine, such as a small amount of swimming pool chlorine) can be added occasionally to the final cistern. If there are livestock with access to the area that drains into the spring it is likely contaminated with E coli and maybe cryptosporidium. Crypto is not reliably killed by chlorine.

There are varieties of slow sand filters that don't require purchase of replacement cartridges.

How are you going to control it? Will someone turn it on and watch it, or will it be run automatically?

I install small filter and disinfection system for treating surface waters such as from springs. I installed a smaller system at a church camp near Acuna, MX and one at a church in Bluefields, Nicaragua. When I install a system I show them it's safe by drinking water from it.
 

mexicodiesel

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Pump info needed for unusual Installation

Thanks for replying.
The cistern at the top of the mountain is being built now. It will hold 33,000 gallons. I will need a pump bigger than 5 gpm. Since there is no electricity anywhere nearby, we will have to use a generator in a small house next to the cistern that will be fed by the spring. Should we consider another cistern and pump half way in between the spring and the top of the mountain?

Ryan Maness
www.downinmexico.org
 

Bob NH

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How many gallons per day will they use? That is more important than the size of the cistern.

If usage is more than the cistern holds then you will need to pump longer or multiple cycles each day.

What is the daily cycle. I often use a peak hour demand of 15% of the daily usage.

Then figure out how many hours you want to pump. That gives you the GPM you want to deliver.

That will determine the size of the pump, the size of the pipe, and the size of the generator necessary to run the pump.

You can pump about 32 GPM through a 2" Schedule 80 PVC pipe with a Goulds 33GS75 7.5 HP pump. With a 10 HP 33GS100 you can get about 40 GPM through that same pipe. You could put 50 to 70 gallons through a 2" pipe but the pressure loss would be so great that you would need a more powerful pump.

Those are the biggest 4" diameter pumps I would use because efficiency drops off at higher flows. If you need more than that you should go to a 6" submersible.

You can get whatever you need in terms of pressure and flow. Figure between 0.25 and 0.32 HP per GPM at your pressure requirements. Doubling the pipe size will permit about 5 times the flow.

It may be possible to get a non-submersible multistage pump at lower cost but I haven't searched for one. I can check that out after you provide your flow requirements.

If you have high flow it might be better to get two pumps so the whole system won't fail if one pump goes down.
 

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In my opinion, the 33GS75 and the 33GS100 are bad designed pumps. They have a two piece shaft and require more cooling flow than other pumps of that size. The 25GS and the 40GS are fine.
 

mexicodiesel

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There is no way for me to really know the usage per day since these people have never had running water before and they dont waste it like we do. I would like to only pump three hours per day @ 25 gpm just to get the upper cistern completely filled. I realize that it may take at least three days to get it filled, then maybe run it less to stay ahead of the usage.
The size of the upper cistern is 13,208 gallons or 50,000 liters.
We would like to use 2" black poly to keep costs down, but it may not hold the pressure at the pump and up to half the distance to the upper cistern. We are considering the possiblity of constructing another cistern half way in between.
Again the elevation we need to raise the water is 600' over a distance of .85 miles.

thanks so much for your advice,
Ryan Maness
 

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You might want to think solar powered if you have good sun. Pumps made by Dankoff (loerntz) have changed names but a web search still finds them under those names. Some of them are positive displacement types, not centrifigal and pretty efficient.
 

Bob NH

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I'm making the following assumptions:

1. The route to reach the village is the one with the least least elevation change, and that the cistern is at an elevation that will pressurize the distribution system.

2. The spring will support 25 GPM.

You would not need another cistern. You could install a booster pump half way up the hill. The heavier pipe need only extend high enough to reach where the pipe will handle the pressure. One site lists 280 psi for schedule 40. http://www.dafehr.com/George Fisher/gfs40press.htm

The additional cost of Schedule 80 vs Schedule 40 PVC pipe is about $0.70 per foot. Some of that would be offset by the cost of wire to the pump, the controls, and the fact that two pumps will cost more than one pump. At your pressures I believe that PVC is probably less expensive than polyethylene.

You can probably make a pretty good estimate of how much water will be required.
1. Do they have, or will they have, flush toilets, bathtubs, and showers? What will they do with the used (waste) water? Usage could be 5 to 25 gallons per day per person. What is the population served?

2. Will they be irrigating fields or gardens with the water? Can calculate based on areas, inches of water, and frequency.

3. Will they be watering livestock? There are standards for how much water is required by livestock.

Growth in demand can be accommodated by running the pump longer or more often.

Is the generator going to deliver electricity to the village?
 

Redwood

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You might want to think solar powered if you have good sun. Pumps made by Dankoff (loerntz) have changed names but a web search still finds them under those names. Some of them are positive displacement types, not centrifigal and pretty efficient.

My first thought was "Yea Right" but I searched like you said and it may be just the ticket... Those pumps are more stout than I thought they would be with 6-almost 800 feet of lift!
Might be a good place to think outside the box!

http://www.innovativesolarsolution.com/solar-water-pumps-27/

http://www.scsolar.com/Dankoff_ETA_Pumps.html
 

Alternety

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I have one of them 500' down a 620' hole. I accidentally ran one into a sealed pipe once. The owner of Dankoff asked me how high the pressure had gone because they had never been able to measure it with their lab equipment.

The ones with the eccentric rotor are very robust. They have a soft start so they don't need torque arrestors. They use a water bearing, stainless for metal, and the rotor is a permanent magnet and the stator is embedded in the casing in a potting compound. There is nothing particularly prone to failure down the hole. That design comes from crude oil pumps. My well will handle 3 - 3.5 GPM. I was using just the well pump to run a pressure tank set at 40/60. I have never seen the pump use more than about 500 watts.

You can supply your own solar array, but you need to buy the controler with the pump. It will run from batteries.
 

Bob NH

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The combination of a solar pump and a cistern is very attractive. That is especially the case in a region that has greater than average sunlight.

The solar system with small pump wouuld require a much smaller pipe, no generator, no fuel, and no operator.

The pump will operate whenever power is available. Because the energy is free the risk of overflowing the cistern can be disregarded. If there is a modest battery then excess power could be stored to supplement the solar power when the sun doesn't provide quite enough power. With that kind of solar/battery/pump setup it is possible to use every bit of solar power that the panels can collect.

If the cistern is visible from the village it would be possible to build a float-operated indicator that could be seen, possibly with optical assistance, to know how much water is in the cistern.

I would still maintain a small amount of chlorine in the cistern, using calcium hypochlorite ("pool chlorine"). That could be added manually.

The system should be covered to prevent contamination by animals, evaporation of the water, and evaporation of the chlorine. It should be shaded to prevent it from getting too hot, unless hot water is desirable. Hot water could cause problems with plastic pipes down to the village.
 

Alternety

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You would not need to allow overflow if you put in a float switch and ran a small wire pair to the pump controller for control. The controller will also protect from low water in the source.
 
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