Small Ground Water Well Pumping System

I had some spare 12 volt solar panels left over from a past project and spare groundwater well and a garden that needs watering so I set up this system. I actually rigged it up last year with just the panels sitting flat on top of the well but I raided the scrap bin and rigged up a mount. The well is about 17' deep from the cover of the well. The ground water level starts high in the spring and drops over the season but it has never run out.. I use standard 12 volt Ruel brand bilge pumps. One pump is at the bottom of an intake hose that is hung down from the top of the well. it pumps to the blue barrel. There is float switch near the top of the barrel to turn the pump off when the barrel is full. There is second bilge pump in the blue barrel. It pumps to the plastic tank whihc is also equipped with a float switch to turn off the pump when full. The plastic tote does distort when full. There is not a lot of pressure on the tote bin but I have whirly bird sprinkler that puts out about an 8 foot radius. i need to move it few times to cover my small garden. If I need more pressure I have AC pump that I can hook onto the outlet.

To deal with the need for more lift off the pump in the well, there are two panels in series, they are 25 +/- year old Siemens rated at 60 watts each. The blue barrel pump is just hooked to one panel. There is no battery or any other controls, the bilge pumps are quite tolerant of the voltage variations from the panels. I do need to clean up the wiring as I did not have any USE 2 outdoor rated wire in stock. If I need to I can manually adjust the tilt but the sun angle is high enough that the panels get 12 hours of sun. With the current groundwater level the tank will fill in less than 8 hours but as the level drops it can take longer.

This setup saves running a deep well pump


well pump small.jpg