Water pump

[Barney]

Hello I don't suppose this is strictly on topic, but I wonder if there is anyone here who knows about water pumps. What I want to do is pump water up from a small stream on some land that I have as an allotment. The stream is on the land and I only want a relatively small amount for watering plants in a polytunnel etc - so I don't think there are any legal problems. I have a storage tank about 60 or 70 yards up from the stream and I want to pump water up to this, the land slopes a fair bit so I would estimate that the tank would be about 20 feet higher than the stream. My question is about what type of pump I would need to do this. I have looked at a few, and they have ratings about 'head' and all kinds of complicated things which I'm not sure how to relate to what I want it to do. Can anyone offer any help/advice?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Oh there could be (and certainly would have been prior to 1 April). You may need permission and a license from, IIRC, the environment agency. Check

you don't think you need a license, you may well need to meter the amount of water you abstract and keep records of it, so you can prove you have kept below the level requiring a license. If you are using water for agriculture, including irrigation, it looks like you still need their consent before you proceed and if you are using any chemicals/insecticides/fertilizers, I suspect they may require an Environment Impact Assessment. There are stonking great fines for illegal water abstraction.

I don't know how big your polytunnel is, but have you thought of trying to collect the rainwater from it into gulleys and then pump that into storage butts? Half my house roof drains via a water butt, and that fills in 10 minutes or so of just light drizzel. I was using it over the weekend to wash the car, clean the wheelie bins out, and all the other fun games to be had with a 1600W water pistol, err I mean pressure washer...

[Barney]

not

Thanks for that, but all I wanted advice for on here was about a suitable pump. The amount of water that will abstract will be so small that none of these things will apply to me. I knew all about the legal position on water abstraction, I just put in that bit about 'I don't think there are any legal problems' because I didn't want to go into those issues on this ng (I would have asked uk.legal about that anyway, had I have wished to).

[iarocu]

Try rec.ponds. Plenty threads about pumps there. Someone may be able to help.

Iain

[Barney]

Thanks, I tried it but my newsreader doesn't seem to support it.

[Pat Bradley]

Screwfix do an electric pump for £40 or so, and a hand powered version of the same thing, take a look at their site.