I live in Slovakia, but being American my English is a lot more proficient, so easier to ask this on an English speaking forum:
Our house is down in a valley with the back yard running up a hill into a field. There is a well next to the house that is 40 feet deep, with the water starting around 25 feet deep, and about 3 feet in diameter (hand dug perhaps a century ago and lined with stones!). The hill has a change in elevation of somewhere around 50 feet (I've measured using a GPS only, so it isn't very accurate, and topo maps don't tell me either). I will want to get water up that hill and a distance of at least 400 yards away to fill a water trough for 5-10 cows. Closer to the house, but some of it still up the hill and at most 100 yards from the well are different gardens where I want to be able to water, prefereably having enough pressure to run sprinklers, though I'll use a lot of drip irrigation for the gardens. I also want to use the well water for the house (probably not for drinking, because its nitrate level was above what is safe for children to drink, though I wonder if the water not being drawn from it in years makes a difference in that).
I know right now that there is an appreciable pressure loss from the municipal water supply going up the hill and 200 yards away through polypipe with an approximately 9/16" ID, such that using the common 6 position hose pistol on "jet" I can only get water to squirt about 4 feet. I am planning though with the pump to install polypipe with approximate 1" ID to minimize friction loss.
I have spent a lot of time studying what is on the market here. I haven't seen any of these CSV valves that reading on this forum enlightened me about, so maybe they aren't marketed in Europe. I am pretty much set on a 3-phase submersible pump with a 1.5hp motor that's made in a nearby city (everything, even the motor is made in the same factory) as its quality at a reasonable price and a design that's been around 50 years. It has a maximum head of 80m (260 feet) and delivers 40 liters per minute (10gpm) at 0 feet.
What I imagine doing is this:
Pipe from pump goes into laundry/utility room of house where the pressure tank will be. At the pressure tank is also the pressure switch and a "self cleaning filter". beyond that is a T where one side goes back outside and to the gardens, up the hill, etc. The other side goes through a pressure regulator and on to bathroom showers, washing machine, etc. To ensure that enough pressure goes up the hill, my thought is to set the pressure switch cut off pretty high (pump is theoretical max pressure around 125PSI, so maybe set the switch to cut off at 110 PSI) and cut in also higher than what actually goes to the in-house plumbing, which I would set the pressure regulator to keep at 40 PSI. All of the polypipe is rated to a pressure of 150PSI.
Is this a reasonable approach to solving the problem of getting water into the house and up the hill?
Then there is the pressure tank, and like everyone else I'd prefer smaller-- 40 gallon is still comfortable in my budget for all this (~ $200 for the tank).
You know, I just realized though that rather than speculating on the height of the hill, I can take a reading of water pressure at the house and then at the end of the polypipe I have now and the difference in that static pressure will basically equal the hill height.
Anyway, I just wonder if I'm going down the right track in my plans so far. Pretty much the only thing I feel really uncertain about is the sizing of the pressure tank. And is there any sort of reason not to have a start pressure of --say-- 50 PSI and cut off at 110 PSI? I found tables for drawdown factors, but none of them included such a large differential in pressure.
Our house is down in a valley with the back yard running up a hill into a field. There is a well next to the house that is 40 feet deep, with the water starting around 25 feet deep, and about 3 feet in diameter (hand dug perhaps a century ago and lined with stones!). The hill has a change in elevation of somewhere around 50 feet (I've measured using a GPS only, so it isn't very accurate, and topo maps don't tell me either). I will want to get water up that hill and a distance of at least 400 yards away to fill a water trough for 5-10 cows. Closer to the house, but some of it still up the hill and at most 100 yards from the well are different gardens where I want to be able to water, prefereably having enough pressure to run sprinklers, though I'll use a lot of drip irrigation for the gardens. I also want to use the well water for the house (probably not for drinking, because its nitrate level was above what is safe for children to drink, though I wonder if the water not being drawn from it in years makes a difference in that).
I know right now that there is an appreciable pressure loss from the municipal water supply going up the hill and 200 yards away through polypipe with an approximately 9/16" ID, such that using the common 6 position hose pistol on "jet" I can only get water to squirt about 4 feet. I am planning though with the pump to install polypipe with approximate 1" ID to minimize friction loss.
I have spent a lot of time studying what is on the market here. I haven't seen any of these CSV valves that reading on this forum enlightened me about, so maybe they aren't marketed in Europe. I am pretty much set on a 3-phase submersible pump with a 1.5hp motor that's made in a nearby city (everything, even the motor is made in the same factory) as its quality at a reasonable price and a design that's been around 50 years. It has a maximum head of 80m (260 feet) and delivers 40 liters per minute (10gpm) at 0 feet.
What I imagine doing is this:
Pipe from pump goes into laundry/utility room of house where the pressure tank will be. At the pressure tank is also the pressure switch and a "self cleaning filter". beyond that is a T where one side goes back outside and to the gardens, up the hill, etc. The other side goes through a pressure regulator and on to bathroom showers, washing machine, etc. To ensure that enough pressure goes up the hill, my thought is to set the pressure switch cut off pretty high (pump is theoretical max pressure around 125PSI, so maybe set the switch to cut off at 110 PSI) and cut in also higher than what actually goes to the in-house plumbing, which I would set the pressure regulator to keep at 40 PSI. All of the polypipe is rated to a pressure of 150PSI.
Is this a reasonable approach to solving the problem of getting water into the house and up the hill?
Then there is the pressure tank, and like everyone else I'd prefer smaller-- 40 gallon is still comfortable in my budget for all this (~ $200 for the tank).
You know, I just realized though that rather than speculating on the height of the hill, I can take a reading of water pressure at the house and then at the end of the polypipe I have now and the difference in that static pressure will basically equal the hill height.
Anyway, I just wonder if I'm going down the right track in my plans so far. Pretty much the only thing I feel really uncertain about is the sizing of the pressure tank. And is there any sort of reason not to have a start pressure of --say-- 50 PSI and cut off at 110 PSI? I found tables for drawdown factors, but none of them included such a large differential in pressure.
