Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am thinking to pump water from my fish tank to water ornamental plants in a small courtyard which has an existing irrigation system using 1/2” pvc pipes. float valve will refill the fish tank.

Are there any small pump that could generated say 25psi over half inch pvc pipes? Most aquarium pump publish gallons per minute, no water pressure.


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I think the reason pond and aquarium pumps use flow instead of pressure is they take into account head height and flow restrictions as resistance. Resistance creates back pressure which is thought of as a limitation more than a feature. At some point of resistance or head height every water pump loses all psi and the flow stops. Water systems in aquariums and ponds are open loop systems unlike the water systems in our homes which are closed loop systems.

Make sense. Therefore it has been hard to look for that pump


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>> reason pond and aquarium pumps use flow instead of pressure is they take into account head height and flow restrictions as resistance

that is pretty much the case for most commercial, engineering and mining pumps as well as head and loss thereof is basically the crux of pipe system network planning with flow as the subsequent 'lookup' outcome.

In their cases the head-flow performance charts come from the supplier - at pond level they are on the box.

incidentally psi translates to mmH2O though it is hard to allocate this to a specific point in the network.
(you can obviously measure it with a clear pipe or pressure dial)
hence mostly pipe systems work on a 'net head flow outcome'.

My main issue is that very few methods rate pipe diameter to the pump and/or flow.
All flows have an optimal pipe diameter but even when I have asked people who in the area few are able to point to the calculation (a lot is done empirically by lab testing - which doesn't always mean 100% in the real world).

Googled a bit, supposingly 1 psi = 2.3ft head. So to achieve 20psi needs a pump that can handle 46 ft of head or something like a 0.75hp pump.


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Swap out existing retic sprinkler heads for low pressure ones perhaps. Solids could be an issue with fine sprinklers, want to be sure it's well filtered. I've been playing with this where I am now, not fish water, but dam water pumped up to a header tank means fairly poor pressure and some gunk in the water. Gave up on the microsprayers and drippers, wobble head sprinklers work well for me with low pressure dirty water.

I am basically giving up on this idea, too expensive (new big azz pump) and potential clogging of landscape emitters,


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