Solar Pumps

Hi all, new poster so my first question. I've just built a new wildlife pond, and then got carried away and built a second one with the leftover liner. I am planning to put a little header pool above the second one to visually link the two. Getting electricity down there is a bit of a non-starter, so I was thinking of using a solar pump to feed the header pool which will have a little waterfall to the lower pond.
It only needs to raise it about 1ft and travel about 2meters max. Has anybody got any experience/recommendations of them?
thanks

 

Could you tell me what make and LPH it was? Like all things I guess you get what you pay for, Im sure some of them work better than others

 

Taken the plunge and ordered a Solaray 1550LPH with Battery Back Up, will let you know how I get on

 

That is a huge amount of work for a pump to do . A few years ago I could have done the calculation I have quite a large Hozelock 240V pump to raise water 1 metre for my pebble pool. I would be amazed if a solar pump can achieve this work rate. Give it a go and good luck ! Maybe Tesla make solar pumps now

 

@Jellyfire I use a small pump (15gph) for my bird bath. But what I did was use a regular pond pump and hook it up to an inverter which runs from a 25w solar panel. The sun shines, the pump operates. If I needed it to run round the clock, I would do as I did with my overhead greenhouse fans. Let a solar panel run the fan directly through a timer switching it on 5 minutes on the hour during the day and another panel charges a 35ah battery which I have the timer operate the fan for 5 minutes every hour at night. Enough to circulate the air. The 5 minutes can be adjustable to any time lengths I prefer. But this way, I know that I will never run out of power in the night

The current solar powered devices we have now are a far cry and much better than those we had years ago. I know this first hand because I am fascinated with the so and so's! Just purchased some lights that are supposed to operate on batteries and I thought this was wasteful so took them apart and hooked up from a solar powered lawn light instead. Now my pink flamingos have a soft pink glow in the night

 

Isn’t there a big difference in the power required to raise and the power required to travel distance though? I think raising a metre is a much bigger ask than raising 1ft and travelling a couple of metres in distance (as I understood it anyway, will soon find out!)

 

Canadian Lori, that sounds a great solution, but also sounds way beyond my abilities!

 

Yes but it all takes power to move water.
Just noted the one you are looking at Solaray 1550LPH , now that is a huge solar pump ! Not cheap but 1500 litres is a good flow ( my pool pump runs at 1500 litres ). Keep us posted on this one Jellyfire Never knew off the shelf solar pumps had progressed so much.

 

Hi @Jellyfire i'm unable to help you out but i would just like to say to GC

 

From what ive read and seen things have come a long way and products do work better but i couldn't see it running a small pump 24/7, maybe put a switch on it so it can be turned off you only really need it on when your out in the garden,

Other alternative would be run some power for a pump armored cables not that expensive and a outdoor socket and your good to go.

 

No they don’t run 24/7, the battery is supposed to keep it running for 3 or 4 hours after the sun has gone.
It has external settings for operation on the control box, you can run continuously (while it has power) or set it to come on for 2/3/4 hours etc.

I think the latest ones have come a long way in the last couple of years. Yet to see whether 1500LPH is realistic or not though, maybe that’s if it’s situated in the Arizona desert!

 

Funny you should mention Arizona solar farms, I always think of this when you mention solar. When I was working we supplied a lot of specialist fasteners to these projects. I think this array should keep your water feature running 24/7