Wednesday the electrician ran new wire from the barn, hooked up my $198 power switch, and hooked up the pump. We tried to pump water and then the electrician would do a final check that he set the overload protection correctly. After numerous tries and failures he left for his next job.
I found a leaky fitting in the intake pipe and thought that was the problem. I cut off the plastic fitting, got a new one from Lowes and glued it on the PVC pipe. Wouldn't pump water. I got a taller section of plastic pipe and placed it on the outlet pipe so I would have a greater amount of water for priming. The operator's manual had called for a priming pipe one to two feet above the pump. It was about four feet above the pump. Still wouldn't pump water. We called it quits for the night as it was getting dark.
Donna came over in the morning. She said, "When you give an enema you have to make sure there is no air in the line. We need to make sure there is no air in the feeder line to the pump." Enema?!! Donna was a nurse before she retired.
Donna brought a hand pump. This pump is used to draw the water up the intake line to the pump. We then started the pump and it began to pump water. It was a decent amount of water, surprisingly a little rusty and dirty, but then all of sudden the water flow increased a lot and it cleared up.
Not only there was air in the intake line but there seems to have been some sort of blockage or restriction of the flow.
All other times during the day when we stopped and restarted the pump we did not have to re-prime it.
The next challenge was the pipes for irrigating. I didn't know exactly how many sprinklers this size of pump would operate. We put eight out there.
We had a challenge in hooking up the pipes to reduce the leakage at the connections. We ended up with a mixture of Donna's and Dad's pipes.
The eight sprinklers really threw out the water. I decided to hook up more pipes/sprinklers. The water coming out of the sprinklers was low. I started taking off pipes one at a time. A bit of a challenge when the pump is running. I would kick and remove the end plug. Then unhook and remove that pipe and the next pipe. I would lift and drain that next pipe before installing the end pug on it. Then I would slide it back into the line and hook it place.
I found one sprinkler just shooting water like an open faucet. That pipe was in the middle and I had to remove and replace it. Also several other pipes were very leaky at their connection and I replace a couple of those. Donna replaced an old dried worn rubber ring with a newer one and that greatly reduced the leak.
I ended up with 12 sprinklers operating. Not as many as I had hoped but certainly better than the one lawn sprinkler I had been slowly moving around the hayfield. And the 12 sprinklers each have larger area of coverage than the lawn sprinkler. If I fix the leaky connections I may be able to run one or two more sprinklers.
Friday I will come up with a new configuration of pipes now that I know the number of sprinklers. Then every 12 hours move those pipes across the field.
The pump setup with the priming pump attached. I also had to replace the gate valve as the previous one would not completely close to an internal misalignment. I had the two valves for sale at a previous yard sale. i am glad they did not sell as I priced a similar 2 inch valve at Lowes and they cost almost $48.
The green grass in the foreground right is the area where I had run the lawn sprinkler a week or two ago.
A box elder has grown around some of dad's pipes. The one on the left is pinned in place and I will have to cut part of the tree to remove the pipe.
A 33 second video of the pump inaction: https://youtu.be/wgWwll-JgUk
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