The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Creek pumping update

creek pump sprinkler


When we first started using the large well pump to supply water to the irrigation sprinklers I was timid about how long it should be used at one time.

I was concerned that too much continued pumping might damage the motor, but little by little we kept using it for longer episodes. Now it's not uncommon to see them going for hours at a time.

Every now and then a sprinkler head will get clogged with some creek debris, but it only takes a minute to unscrew the hose and remove any offending algae or sand.

What's most challenging is getting 220 volts from the trailer to the creek. More on that in part 2 of this creek pumping series.



Anna Hess's books
Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.


My Gould pump has been down in my well for 30 years now with no problems at all. Knock on wood.
Comment by zimmy Tue Jun 1 22:25:23 2010
I'm glad that you're doing a short series on this, as I've been very curious about how it's been working out - we used an old sump pump in our creek for keeping a fish pond filled for one season and toyed with the idea of using it for the garden as well, but were concerned about things exactly like "gee, won't it suck up sediment and clog the sprinklers?"
Comment by Ikwig Tue Jun 1 23:05:49 2010

Zimmy --- awesome! I hope ours will last that long (though who knows how old it was when we got it.)

Ikwig --- We built our whole irrigation system around the pump. All of the other sprinklers we tried did clog up with sediment, but these impulse sprinklers are real troopers. I suspect our plants get a bit of additional nutrition by being watered with creek water.

Comment by anna Wed Jun 2 06:39:47 2010





profile counter myspace



Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.

Required disclosures:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!

Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.