# Load switcher?



## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

I own a piece of off grid property that I plan to homestead. One of the first projects I have planned for this spring is to put in a well to provide water to an orchard. The orchard is the second project.

The ground is mostly sand and there is a place on the property that is wetland. I can hammer down a sand point well in a location that should be within the reach of the watertable. 

The pumping has to be DC and work when I am not there. I can set up a panel, charge controller, battery and pump to suck water out of the well but it won't have enough pressure or flow rate to run sprinklers. I plan to fill a 700 gallon storage tank with it. The orchard will be uphill from the storage tank so a pressure pump is required to pump water from the tank to sprinklers in the orchard. 

Both pumps are located in the same place so they can both run off the same battery and panel but, preferabaly, not at the same time. A battery operated timer will turn the sprinklers on at prearranged times and the low pressure will turn the pressure pump on. When it pumps the water out of the storage tank the well pump will come on and fill the tank back up. 

Is there some sort of switch that will only allow one pump to run at once? Otherwise the battery, charge controller, and panel will have to be bigger to handel both pumps running at once.


----------



## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

Why not use 2 timers set to go off at different times?

WWW


----------



## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

Nimrod said:


> I plan to fill a 700 gallon storage tank with it. The orchard will be uphill from the storage tank so a pressure pump is required to pump water from the tank to sprinklers in the orchard.


Forget the sprinklers ( encourages fungus problems and most the water is lost evaporation anyway ). Use low pressure drip. 

Locate the tank at the top of the orchard, eliminate the pump you were going to use to run sprinklers, let gravity feed your drip system, use a timer to control when it runs.

Now you just need one pump, no controller and no batteries. (spend that money on more panels ) When the sun shines, the pump runs and fills the tank. 

KISS ( Keep It Super Simple )


----------



## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Switching loads is easy with relays.


----------



## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

Thanks for the info.

WWW, This may be the simplest way to do it. I could do away with the battery and the charge controller too. The pumps wouldn't run if the day was cloudy so I would have to set up the timers on the pumps to come on at multiple times to be certain the storage tank gets filled up and the trees get watered. The pressure switch on the well pump would not let it come on if the tank was full.

Andy, The well pump probably doesn't have the ability to lift the water out of the well and pump it up the hill 20 feet to the storage tank on top of the hill. The orchard will be on the top and side of the hill so I doubt there will be much gravity induced pressure even if the tank was on top of the hill. I tried a gravity drip system here and it didn't work well.

I get that sprinklers are not the best way to water. I set up a garden hose here that runs past each orchard tree and has holes punched in it at every tree. It's pressurised and works fine. The new place will have many more trees. I will have to see if I can afford a bunch of garden hose to use there.

Jim-mi, How could I build a load switcher? All it would have to do is only allow one pump to run at a time.


----------



## Fire-Man (Apr 30, 2005)

Nimrod, just attach a relay to your pressure switch(or wire going to the pump) so when the pressure switch clicks in to turn the pump on----it clicks in(applies voltage) a relay that turns off the other pump---when your pressure pump cuts off the relay will turn the other pump back on.

Not sure if this is what you looking for but it will keep both pumps from running at the same time.


----------



## reubenT (Feb 28, 2012)

about 30 ft head needed to run a low pressure drip system at rated pressure, will run a bit slow at 20 ft head. (might clog the emitters if the water is high mineral.) much less head than that and a homemade open system would be better, like garden hoses with holes in them. So pumping to a tank at the highest point of the orchard would work best. Minimize the power needed. To build up enough pressure to run sprinklers takes more power than needed to get water distributed. I set up a system for a neighbor with solar powered pump using a 12V 60 psi diaphram type sprayer pump, pumps from a spring to a tank above the house, probably around 100 ft elevation from spring to tank. (We have gravity flow from springs at the same level to about half of our land, with housing at the low point so we have lots of pressure, and I'll use drip irrigation up near the spring level.)


----------

