what size pump?

[bullseye]

i'll post some pics up later tonight, but i'm having a problem and it could be from a few possible causes, the first me not knowing what i'm doing.

 

i've set up a recirculating system, the recirculating bit works fine but not the circulating bit. obviously pics will help but the system is fed by a 400 L p/h pump 13mm. it requires a head height of about 1m and i'm finding there isn't enough pressure in the hose (which has 1 x 13mm end plug either side of its 1.5m length). i have 5 x 4mm flex tube coming off the one piece of 13mm poly tube and the pressure in this tube isn't equal either. normally only 2 out of the 5 hoses will work, although if you manually syphon the water out of the 4mm flex tubes when the pump is running then all 5 will work.

i've ordered a 1200 L p/h pump as i was thinking simply a stronger pump will do the trick. are there any suggestions for how to increase the water pressure in this system? is this pump simply too small?

cheers

[need4weed3]

imo

aqua pro ap 1350

plenty of pressure

i run 8x 4mm lines off mine

[chuffer]

pump manufacturers can be decieving bastards. they may claim the pump can lift a head of 1metre and also pump 400lph and they let you think it can do both at the same time - but it more than likely cant. It lifts water to 1 metre and the flow is virtually zilch, it moves 400 lph, but only on the flat. Maybe its capable of lifting say, 180 per hour up half a metre and maybe they say that somewhere in the small print.

Anyway before you replace the pump get the total lift as low as possible and no more than .75m also make sure there are no high humps to get the water over. When your resevoir is full then the head to lift is less than after the level drops through evaporation etc.

If water flow is slow then use wider pipe and bend the pipe gently rather than using corner pieces because sharp bends will really make a mess of the flow rate.

I can say more once you've posted pics

[bullseye]

Chuffer exactly what you were saying is right. i filled the resi tank and put the pump on and it charged ahead. i've already ordered the 1200 L p/h so hopefully that will have the pushing power to last a whole resevoir. yeah i don't have any sharp bends besides the T-piece connection shown in one of those pictures. so with a full resi it's fine, with a half resi not so functional.

any way you can see that i could improve this setup?

cheers fellas

[eyeballgummy]

Check out pumps on ebay from seller pumpsnstuff72. Choices from 35 upto 160psi. Yes they are 12 volt, but nothing a cheap 12v power supply wont fix. Lt/r varies as with pressures. Make sure you build high pressure plumming to suit!

 

I dont believe in using aquarium pumps they are not designed for pressure just volume. I have a friend with an aeroponic setup with 2 x 7lt/hr foggers in each spray bin and not even a 7500 lt/hr aquarium pump could light up just one of these foggers correctly.

 

The foggers are recomended to run at 60 psi, and only these pumps similar to Flowjets will work!

 

Hope this helps ya?

[chuffer]

Eyeball seems on the mark with his suggestions. Else your new pump may just do the trick.

You can tweak a little more performance out of the low-head pump (1 metre is low-head) by lowering the pipe that takes the water to the pots down to just above the top of the pots (maybe just a couple of inches lower, but it will noticably improve flow-rate). The pipe I mean is visible in 1st, 2nd and 5th pics.

Also if you can put some blocks under the reservoir to lift it up perhaps an inch or so, so long as the top of the water level when full remains below the bottom of the pots then you'll see improvement from that too.

Finally, if the pipes that feed each plant have drippers on them, its worth trying removing the drippers, just leaving uninterrupted flow into each pot but its important to check that water/nutes flows onto every plant, not just the nearest or lowest one, and that it flows evenly like this whether the reservour is full or at low part of pumping cycle

 

Good luck

BTW your plants look good

[bullseye]

sweet! thanks for that guys i've got it working nicely by lowering the feeder pipe to the top of the pots. the bigger pump is great too. if i ever need another pump i'd look at getting one of those water pressure dry pumps i think.

cheers for the help guys