Waterfall Pump
How To Choose A Waterfall Pump For Your Pond?
It’s important to decide the following before you can go ahead. Will your waterfall be a large gushing, roaring high flow waterfall or do you prefer the soothing and peaceful sound of a waterfall or stream in your backyard or garden?
The principles in choosing the pump are similar and obviously you’ll need a much larger pump for the large waterfall or stream than you would for a more gentle, meandering waterfall or garden stream.
Another important principle to consider is where your waterfall is situated… If it’s outside your bedroom window you’ll need to switch the waterfall pump off to get some sleep. This means that if you keep fish in your backyard pond there must ALWAYS be a smaller pump running 24/7 to keep the bioflter active and running effectively.
The major cost for waterfall situations is not the cost of the pump when you buy it… It’s the annual running cost and large pumps consume lots of power so expect a larger electric bill every month if you go for that mini Niagara Falls.
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Waterfall design and pump specification:
The table below gives you the fundamental principle to assist you in choosing a waterfall pump. This aspect of waterfall design is very critical and you only need 2 pieces of information. These are …
1. Vertical height of waterfall inlet above water surface of pond (NOT bottom of pond) … measure this in feet
2. Width of water overflow point for waterfall … if overflow is series of smaller overflows add all together to get width in inches
Waterfall Pump Selection Table
Check where height meets width in the table. This is the flow your pump model must deliver. For a wide range of guaranteed.
Example of waterfall pump choice using above selection table…
You have a waterfall with following selection criteria…
Height of inlet to waterfall is 3 feet above pond surface.
The overflow width is 9 inches wide.
Then you need a pump that will deliver 1200 gph at a height of 3 feet.
An example of such a pump is Danner Supreme Mag Drive 1200 gph as colored yellow above.
If you have a waterfall 24 inches wide and 3 feet high you would need 2 model 1200gph pumps.
IMPORTANT TIP: always go for one size larger if in any doubt.
Another Way To Decide On Waterfall Flow
If you would like to test how much water looks best for your waterfall so you can buy the very best pond pump do the following…
i) Place a hosepipe into the waterfall inlet
ii) Adjust the water flow from the hose pipe until you are happy with the effect
iii) Without closing the hose fill a known volume container from the hose pipe
iv) Calculate the flow rate by dividing the volume of the container by the time taken to fill it
v) For water use the following if you choose to weigh the water instead of measuring the volume:
1 US gallon weighs 8.83 lbs
1 Imperial gallon weighs 10 lbs
1 litre weighs 2.2 lbs
vi) If one hose does not deliver sufficient water then use 2 hose pipes.