Good type of pump for irrigation from rain tanks?

[chrysanthemum]

We’ve been adding rain tanks to our property over the years, and we now have five large tanks in addition to the two homemade rain barrels we brought from Virginia.  We can store about 3,000 gallons of water, most of it near our house.  We use hoses to siphon from place to place as needed, most often moving water from the largest tanks in the front of the house to the 500 gallon tank located nearest to the garden.

As our garden has increased in size and we’re back in drought conditions, we’ve been thinking of buying a pump to help out with water transfer and irrigation when necessary.  We don’t want something submersible inside our tanks because we want to move it from place to place as suits our needs.  We’ve been looking at plug-in transfer pumps, but we are no experts on what specs would be best, and I thought that you folks on this forum would be able to help us out with our thinking.

heavyhitterokra , macmex , I thought I had read something a long time ago along these lines on this site, but I can’t find anything.  Feel free to direct me to a previous discussion if there is one.

I’m happy to answer any questions about distances and elevation change and the like if that helps.  My current thoughts are that I want a basic but reliable pump that can handle moving 500 gallons of water at a time.  I’d be happy for it to have a way to shut off if the water level runs dry, and also a way for me to use a basic hose end sprayer that I can turn on and off at my garden without needing to unplug or turn off the pump each time since the pump will be a walk away.

I’m not even sure that I’m explaining well, but I figured I’d get started by asking for help.  I’d be grateful for any advice.

Thanks.

Edited to add: I would also like it to be reasonably quiet.  I don’t want to destroy the peace of my garden if I’m using it to fill ollas a couple time a week in summer.

[heavyhitterokra]

I couldn't be of much help there, as I just use our drinking water well to water our garden. It has a deep 1/2 horsepower 220-volt pump installed inside it. However, I do occasionally help dig graves and we do occasionally hit water that needs to be pumped out, so we carry a submersible pump on the backhoe that runs off a battery, so again, not much help there either.

Do you have a Tractor Supply Store or a Harbor Freight Store in your area? They both carry a variety of pumps, from hand and drill pumps to the 220-volt kind.

www.google.com/search?q=transfer+pumps+tractor+supply&sxsrf=AOaemvKo6YFiJtuZnVsjE_PnQ4EZCBwGFg:1642964747048&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwig2IDRyMj1AhWWnGoFHXp2AEcQ1TV6BQgBEOMC&biw=1536&bih=760&dpr=1.25#spd=16272446171034572443

www.harborfreight.com/lawn-garden/pumps.html

[chrysanthemum]

We have a Tractor Supply quite nearby and can travel to San Antonio or to another Hill Country town for Harbor Freight. I’ve been looking on their websites, but I’ve gotten confused about transfer pumps versus diaphragm pumps, and then when I start reading about NPT fittings, my head just starts spinning. We’re thinking we just want a pump that plugs into a standard electrical outlet and can be attached to garden hoses. It’s almost that there are too many choices, and I was hoping someone could give me a list of terms and specs to look for.

[macmex]

Wish I could help but I think I´m about in the same boat as you!

[chrysanthemum]

I figured it was at least worth inquiring. I’ve had a little extra downtime this week because my little ones are not severely ill but just feeling crummy enough to get a break from school. I have been researching pumps enough that I think I even dreamed about them one night.

I think we’ll probably end up with a pretty basic transfer pump, but it should speed things up.

[chrysanthemum]

I just wanted to update this thread with some information about my new pump for my rain tanks.  In researching, it looked like what I was wanting was something called a demand/delivery pump that could both respond to a call for water but also run for a long time to transfer from one tank to another.  The problem was that there weren’t many of those to choose from, they tended to be a bit more costly than others, they needed some pretty special fittings, and I would have to order online and wasn’t sure I’d be able to have any dealer/warranty support if something didn’t work.  Thus we decided to go with a less specialized but more local option where a return would be easy if necessary.

We bought a simple 1/10 horsepower transfer pump from Home Depot.  It takes normal garden hose thread, and it’s easily light enough for me to carry to the tank where I need it without having to get help.  (We had looked at some shallow well pumps because of their built-in pressure switches, but they were so large in comparison.). The one feature it didn’t have which I really wanted for safety was a pressure switch to shut it off.  It just has to be unplugged for it to stop.  Because I’m tending to fifteen raised beds in my two gardens, I move my hose a lot.  I get occasional kinks that cut the water, and I also just prefer not to run the water while I’m adjusting or repositioning the hose.  We wanted a quick shut off option and decided that we could achieve that by using a remote control outlet of the type that people use for outdoor Christmas light or exhaust fans in a shop and the like.  It’s a little weird to carry a remote in the pocket of my coveralls, but it’s definitely better than sticking the watering wand in an olla and dashing back to the pump fifty feet away and unplugging the cord with wet hands.  

We had an old hose-hiding container on the property that was left behind by the previous owners.  We tend to leave our hoses out, so I decided to use this to make a little home for my pump.  It has drainage at the bottom in case some water gets in, but I put the pump on a piece of small block we had lying around.  The intake hose goes through the original hose opening, and my husband drilled a second hole on the other side that just fits the output hose.  There’s a lid, so I can keep it covered when it’s not in use, but to use it, I just open it up, pull out the cord, and plug it in.  I can still move it from place to place pretty easily, but this way I can leave it attached to the garden rain tank where it will see by far the most frequent use.

The first picture is one I took when I set it up near a large rain tank in front of the house to transfer water to the garden tank.  It took a little over an hour to pump about three hundred gallons, and it was pumping a long distance.  The front rain tank has been at capacity since our ice storm, and so it was great to get water from there to the garden tank quickly while the garden tank was low enough that I couldn’t use it without the pump.  We then set the pump back up by the garden and used it to water what’s growing and the new potato bed.



Here’s just a tiny corner of one of my onion beds.  I was very late seeding out daikon radishes for cover crops this year, and this bed has beets in the back where I have the daikon in the others, but this corner had some space where I tossed some seed.  I didn’t realize I had done so many or that I would get such good germination, but I just find those sprouts so cheerful that I took a picture.  It’s been really nice to use the pump to water the onion beds, and I’m very thankful for this improvement to our watering system.  I hope it will last for years to come.