Thread: More efficient pump suggestions

Originally Posted by tome

Morning All, i am after some more efficient pump suggestions for a gravity fed system, currently run a Oase Aquamax 14000 dry. At 230W - 24hrs a day. Currently paying 33p per Kw (soon to increase again i think) so around £55 a month. As i understand it turning it off for 6hrs or so at night could have some pretty bad adverse effects so i am after some suggestions for a more efficient pump if such exists? Flow etc seems perfect for the pond to be honest so don't really want to go smaller and risk being underpowered

Retro fit a airlift return would be best but if not possible I believe @smartin did a lot of research in to this and I could be wrong but possible came up with pondxper being one of the best

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Do you have any space for Solar panels? E.g. a pergola over the pond?

If so might be worth considering a small DIY grid tied inverter. That's what I've done on my pond.

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Airlift - Koiknowledge

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Originally Posted by Ajm

I believe @smartin did a lot of research in to this and I could be wrong but possible came up with pondxper being one of the best

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Yep spot on, the Pondxpert 20k variable pumps came out best, will run down to 6500lph at c.24w.

Around 75w should give thereabouts 11,000 lph.

And 20k lph comes in at under 200w.

These pumps are manufactured by Jebao but this specific spec pump only seems to be available from Pondxpert.

It is basically what used to be the Jebao TSP20000 which were replaced with the much less efficient TSP-S 22000 pumps that only go down to 12,000 lph at 80w.






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Originally Posted by tome

What is an airlift return?
I wish i could say £55 was wrong but unfortunately it is not! 230w @ 0.33p kwh - 24hrs comes to around £55pm

Solar panels are an interesting one, we have a brick built shed near i could use to put them on, would be interested to know how you have set that up?
Had a quote for solar on the house but it comes in around 11.5k and that would only prduce about 1/3 of our total required KW.

I got two 365W panels, 2 enphase micro inverters, cabling, a meter and an isolator switch plus some bits for £1k.

All the power coming out of the micro inverters is standard AC power. I just had to wire that into a spare RCD on the consumer unit in my shed and it feeds power to all the pond equipment, with the mains supply covering any shortfall (or all of it at night).

If the panels produce more power than the pond uses, it then feeds power back up the armoured cable into the house. And if the panels produce more than the house needs as well then the excess is fed back into the grid. I don't get paid for that as it's a DIY system) - Hence why I only have a small set up I e. no point paying for extra panels that end up mostly feeding back into the grid.

I'd say you want to aim for a system that is around 3 - 4 times the typical power consumption as they never produce the amount they'. So if you have typical power consumption in the day of 300Watts, you really want to aim for panels with a rating of between 900w - 1.2kw. if you get it installed by an MCS certified installer, then you will get paid (a pittance) for power you feed back into the grid.

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I did consider a battery system. But I'd need waaay more panels to generate enough power - more than I could fit on my pergola.

For a battery system, it'd need to be able to run the pond all day (even on a cloudy day) and to also be able to charge the batteries enough so that they can run all night as well. The cost for such a system would be way more than £1k, with all the extra panels, an off grid string inverter, battery management system plus the batteries as well - which will need replacing in the lifetime of the system.

Also if I went for the off grid battery option, I wouldn't be able to use the solar power to cover some of the house usage as well (as that requires a grid tied inverter).

My aim was just to reduce the amount of electricity I was taking from the grid for a small upfront cost.

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Get yourself a variable speed pump . I use the Jebao TSP 20000 . Running at 80% - or 16k , it uses 126 watts , so a lot less the Aquamax . Also , you can slow it down over winter , if required .

Originally Posted by hippo

Get yourself a variable speed pump . I use the Jebao TSP 20000 . Running at 80% - or 16k , it uses 126 watts , so a lot less the Aquamax . Also , you can slow it down over winter , if required .

Didn't think these were available from Jebao anymore?

The only ones I could see were the TSP22000, which is not as efficient.

And the old TSP 20000's are still available, but branded as PondXpert.


EDIT: Scrap that, looks like the Jebao TSP-20000 are indeed available again. Be interested to know what wattage they go down to. My old one goes down to 24w at 30%, but the newer one is 80w at 30%.