Water Pump question

Hey guys, i have a fair amount of experience with diesel trash pumps and dewatering but not in this situation. I have a job where i have to pump about 500,000 gallons of water , from a pond . The pump will be sitting about 15-20' above the water, with the elevation to the end of the discharge hose about 75' tall by 600+ feet of discharge. Can a 4" or 6" diesel trash pump push water that far efficiently ?

Thanks in advance

Use at least a 6", for that much distance and head you may need to use two pumps with the second about halfway to the outlet point to get the volume you want. If you don't exceed 20 feet of suction head you're probably okay, would be best if there's any way possible to put the pump within about 5-10 feet of the pond surface. Hard pipe of some kind for most of the distance will be more efficient than discharge hose if you can swing it. A good pump rental outfit may have rental pipe also.

Another possibility is a big electric three phase submersible with a diesel generator, I have seen these used for moving large volumes.

In another lifetime I worked for a dirt company as a mechanic/truck driver. They were cleaning out a little pond, maybe thirty feet across, a few feet deep, wanted to muck it out and rock it back to fill it over. They hollered at me to load up a 4" pump and bring it out "that 4" will suck her dry in no time!". They ended up with two 6" pumps and a 5" rented, all pumping 24 hours a day with a tender at night to watch them and keep them fueled to stay ahead of the water. During the day running a 380 hoe, ten solo dump trucks hauling away muck, and six end spills hauling 4" rock for back fill! After a week or so they managed to put enough rock in to close it over, along with three "Wet wells" (said dry wells on the prints, lol) and a 24" ADS perf drain pipe running off the property. Point of the story: sometimes there's a lot more water there than you might think!

Yair . . . Hitachi225. As you know pumps push better than they suck and in my experience getting the last of the water can be a much bigger problem than getting the first of it.

Not knowing your situation I can only say that on a few occasions when dewatering quarries and such like I have had good success with six inch submersibles jury rigged from raft of drums and pumping into lay flat hose . . . just hired a generator to run them.

That was many years ago and technology has moved on of course but I think the basic laws of physics remain about the same. (big grin)

Cheers

Yair . . . You beat me lantraxco (big grin)

Cheers.

LOL! It's the lag from down under to the HEF servers Scrub! At least we had some agreement on the mechanics of the job, yeah? :drinkup

Been down that dewatering a pond project myself. Started out with an old 3" of ours and even went so far as hanging a "aux tank" from the excavator bucket to help it run longer..and still had to make a few trips out there daily to re fill it. Very slow process and just was not getting it done as quickly as we preferred...so we rented a four inch to go along with it..made it better but still taking way to long. Had a large sump dug and this was a "cut off" made by the rail road years ago and were numerous springs in it. Finally we rented a maure lagoon pump, with an agitator nozzle on it and just turned the agitator out into the set aside and fired it up...less than a day we had dewatered what we had been fighting for a week.

The problem with trash pumps that I've experienced was the amount of crud in the water. We were dewatering a surface mine constantly with 6" diesel powered units sometimes pumping around 100' of head. The solids loading in the water concentrated as the level went down. The suction lift also got higher at the same time. Once the slurry got to the right weight, the pumps would quit moving it and the stuff would stay in the pump casings and wear everything out. The pumps also got hot and took out the seals and by the time someone got to them the fluid would drown the pad the pump was sitting on. Now you had to take a machine down to the pad, lift the pump and suction out, rebuild the pad lower in the pit and wait a day or so for the solids to settle and hope the rain did start again and flood out your pump.

I hated that mess because there was no way to make it better with the money we had to work with. Anyway the electric submersible on a raft is the only way to go.

I spent a little time around Chrisafulli pumps. The company I worked for had 3 or 4 of the 16 inch ones. If you ever get a chance to see one them operating I guarantee you will be amazed at how much water they can move. It has been a few years since I ran one but if I remember correctly one of them had the been modified to make the pump longer. That allowed it to pump a longer period of time before it had to be backed down further into the water and add more hose. We used fairly inexpensive diesel powered farm tractors to move them and provide power to the pump PTO.
Here is a link to their website. http://www.crisafullipumps.com/products-services/pumps/trailer/

If we do a job that requires more then a 6" pump we call Godwin. They can do everything from just renting you a pump all the way to setting up the job and maintaining the pumps the whole time.

I think 23 feet is the most you can suction with a pump.