Hi
I have had my Basic Hydro Cart for about 2 weeks now. So far, I have run into a couple of jobs that have not had enough water pressure coming out of the hydrant. The worst one was a house on a private well that only had 18 PSI coming out of the tap; it wasn’t even close to enough pressure to use the system for that house. So I’m looking for a battery-powered pump. Can anyone tell me what pump that you are using (make & model, where purchased, etc.) to boost the water pressure for a Hydro Cart? How effective is it at boosting pressure? Also, where do you install it: before the filters or after?
Not the same set up, but still might be applicable to your situation. We just mounted our ez pure filter in our trailer and it is drawing water out of a water tank so effectively we have 0 psi at our source. We bought a Northstar 12 volt pump from northern tools that we are using to draw from the tank and feed the filter. I don’t recall the model number but it is rated at 60 psi and 4 gpm. We are using a deep cycle marine battery to power it.
You probably only need 50-60psi of pressure (cuz that’s the psi that Eagle sells paired with their systems). Using 100psi might cause issues on the filters. I have a HydroTube from IPC Eagle and had some serious output issues where I had nearly no water flowing out of the tube, though the bypass was flowing fine. I think the problem was that I was using a “25gpm/100psi” harbor freight 115V pump between the spigot and filter and it just stressed the system, maybe… I switched the DI filter and now it has good output on normal pressure without a pump.
For my tank I use a 12v 1gpm/100psi sureflo pump (product#: 8000-946-138) that I got off of eBay for $79. I actually bought two, the second is a backup/portable pump that I wanted to use in-place of the 115V pump and was going to setup like pressuretek’s “pump in a box”. But with the 100psi issue on my HT, I might be looking for a lower psi pre-filter pump.
I might try to find a smaller battery, like a motorcycle battery. The math says that if you have a 8 Amp pump and a 32 Ah (amp hour) battery, it will last 4 hours (32/8=4). Mount them in a tool box, with I/O connections and a fan to cool the pump while running. Then have external terminals and a “charging station” in your van that you connect while not in use (though, have wired so you only charge the batteries while the key is on as not to drain your car’s battery).
Hi Garrett. Thanks for writing. Where in your system do you use that pump; before the filter or after? I have been told that a diaphragm pump may not work quite as well in-line as they generally are used to pump fluid out of a container. I’m wondering how well your pump works as part of your filter system.
Pumps are placed before the filter. the water goes: spigot->pump->filter->house.
I’m not sure how the diaphragm pump would behave inline with a garden hose source from a house. Like I said, I mainly now use a pump to pull water from my tank and using the high-pressure pump may cause problems on the HT. If you have a tank, just fill the tank with the HC at the customer’s house and pump it out from there. You may have to let it fill a bit if you want uninterrupted flow, cuz the water will leave the tank faster than the HC may fill it.
As far as my experiences, I have, a few times, had to entice the “self-priming” pump to prime water through using my generator and backup pump. Sometimes it took more work to get the tank/pump setup going than it was worth. Also, too many jobs in the day with little charge time on the battery made the pump behave poorly and the water would come out so slow and at a low volume making the job take longer with poorer rinsing.
