# New to this. Solar pump for irrigation.



## ctford58 (Jan 5, 2017)

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum as well as the off grid power community. I've been reading and reading to the point I'm confusing myself.
I have some property in a annual late winter/spring flood zone for the Ohio River so it limits what I can do as to permanent structures and amount of money I want to invest. 
I have a beaver slough that is about 7 acres and is about 4 feet deep at the dam most of the year. I have a plot of land about 100 yards away that I broke ground on this fall to plant in the spring. I also planted 3 apple trees and have 2 more to plant at soon as the ground thaws again.

I'm wanting to put some sort of irrigation in because the ground gets so dry in the summer that you could loose your car keys in the crack in the ground.
There will not be more of a rise of 5 feet over the 100 yard run, unless I elevate a sprinkler which would add about 5 more feet.

Sunlight at the dam might be 4 hours of uninterrupted light. If I put panels about 50-100 feet from dam I could get 80% of daily light. 
I figure I do not need a battery storage system other than to possibly act as a capacitance for the system to even out the power. 
I looked at building a ram pump but the is no "flow/drop" from the dam so it sounds like they would not work for me. This is very flat land. 

I was thinking of suspending a pump in the slough and using solar panels either attached to a dead cypress tree or on a elevated platform to keep it out of the floods, but I do not know what type of pump or size of panels. I would be willing to use a sprinkler or some other cheap irrigation system.

Most of what I've seen here references well water pumping. In my mind I picturing something more like a sump pump in a cage for my purposes but could be completely wrong

I'm just trying to do a "proof of concept" right now and would like to give thee apple trees a chance to grow and maybe an acre of a deer food plot for now. If it works I would love to have a full garden and expand. 

I love to build and experiment.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
ctford


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

Can sure be done. A lower flow pump will be less expensive, running a sprinkler will take a bigger pump. Connecting panels straight to a DC pump with no batteries is the simple way to go.

Lot of pumps here:

https://www.solar-electric.com/residential/solar-water-pumping/surface-pumps.html


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

Forget about the Sun. Do you have a place you can use to get the river to run a pump? As long as the river flows, the pump will pump. Hang it off a couple of 55 gal barrels for support and anchor it securely.


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## ctford58 (Jan 5, 2017)

No current on my land. River is at least 2 miles away.

TnAndy thanks for the link.


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