Confused about what pump to get for my fountain

[andemz]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anybody could help me.

i have purchased a fountain which is in 3 tiers, plus the bottom stand totalling a height of about 6ft 2".

the stand which the tiers sit on has a section cut out where obviously the pump fits in. The stand will sit in a circular brick wall, presumably where the water will go.

i need advice on 1) whether these pumps will just plug into a socket and 2) what size pump i should get.

Although i have raised two questions i would be happy for anybody to give me any advice on the whole matter of setting this fountain up.

regards

Andemz

 

[snico]

You will need a pump that has a flow regulator installed, you should get one that pumps approx 500 - 3000 lph, that should be plenty for your fountain.

Henri make good pumps for fountains and water features, have a look here

http://www.gardensite.co.uk/Henri_Studio_Feature_Pumps.htm

You can plug it straight into a socket, but it would be better to be installed correctly, someone with better electrical knowledge will explain how to do that better than me!

 

[zerozero]

In this case (of a water feature) it’s not how fast a pump can pump, its how high it can pump that water to.

Below is a "typical" pump curve graph

You can see that at 20 feet this pump can pump nothing, but at 0 feet it can pump 124 gallons / minute.

So you can see, that to say "you need a pump that can pump 500 -3000 lph" is not really of much use, unless you can see the pumps performance.

Filter pumps, as the name suggests are for pumping water to a pond filter, they need to be able to pump a high volume of dirty water to a filter, but they can not pump it that high.

Feature pumps, need to be able to pump a lot of clean water to a tall height quickly.

There are now a whole variety of (“garden”) pumps that are just for: Filters, fountains, features, water falls, but they all have a pump curve. But you can’t use a clean pump to pump dirty water, it will soon block.

I would suggest a feature or fountain pump would be suitable.

Most online suppliers will sell you any pump with "no questions asked" If in doubt contact the advertiser but be prepared to answer questions such as how tall is the whole feature, how wide is the feature, what are the pump cavity dimensions? etc.