Solar popwered water pump?

A couple of points....

- It's dificult to know what to recommend without knowing how deep the borehole is. The 'cheapie' sump pumps that you can get from Screwfix tend to have a limited head (= the vertical distance they can lift water). Proper pumps designed for well use can pump water much 'higher' - but are correspondingly more expensive. Can you use a length of string with a weight on the end to 'plumb' the well and see how far down it is ? I found my replacement pump through yellow pages - pumps & wells, I think... - flow rate is also important, and I don't expect small solar pumps to shift a great volume of water.

- assuming that you've got any depth at all in your well (as in more than 10 ft) you are going to need a proper well-pump - which will cost from £150 upwards. All the ones I've seen are mains-powered - and are rated at 500watts + - which you're not going to get from a solar panel

- unless it's a very large and expensive one. If you're going to do this seriously you'll need to pump the well water up into a storage tank - which will add to the height your pump needs to lift...

However - all is not lost. Perhaps the first stage would be to get a professional analysis of your well water (£60 - £80). Depending on what that shows, you could either

= give up on the project altogether (if the water quality is too low to do anything with (economically))

= use the water 'as is' for non-critical applications around the parish - garden watering, car washing etc

= go the whole hog and install suitable filtering / pump / tank system to make it fit for human consumption.

We don't use any mains water at all. The previous owner of our bungalow installed a hand-dug well using 5ft diameter concrete sewer pipe sections - it goes down about 25ft, produces water that, after filtration, is a lot nicer that the processed stuff that the water company supply, and costs virtually nothing !

Filtration is via a particulate filter and UV lamp filter - filter installation costs about £250, filter replacement costs £30 annually. The pump and filter lamp cost a small amount in electricity. 'Used' water is processed through our septic tank system.

Result - zero water rates and no hosepipe bans.....

Good luck ! Adrian

Er, possibly not. You need to make sure you have the rights to abstract the water and if you have, how much you can take per unit period.

Easily done, I have a licence for 1000 litres a day.

To the OP Solar powered pumps are really not worth while at only a few GPM minute delivery you would need a large water store above ground, also the purchase cost for a _large_ PV panel and pump would be hard to justify against mains metered water.