I'm impressed with my new Intelliflow Pump!!

As a point of comparison, my system at high speed has about 18 to 20 psi at the filter, and according to the pump curves this should be 75 gpm. Before my solar was installed, my filter pressure was down around 12 psi. One of the big reasons for the increase in filter pressure was the installation of a check valve in the discharge of the filter. Check valve, while sometimes necessary, do produce a large amount of back pressure.
 
I'm sure glad I posted about this pump - I am really learning a lot about it and wanted to thank everyone.

I think I must have been operating this thing at close to max without understanding what was going on. I have had it running for 24 hours now at 1300 RPM which is only using 183 watts and gives enough flow that the heatpump is not tripping on low flow. At this setting the gauge reads zero psi - guess I will need that gauge with a lower range :) NOW I really will save some money on electricity. Thanks.
 
dschlic1 said:
One of the big reasons for the increase in filter pressure was the installation of a check valve in the discharge of the filter. Check valve, while sometimes necessary, do produce a large amount of back pressure.

How many feet of pipe will a check-valve add? (I'm looking to you Mark S :roll: ) The way I have mine planned the water goes through three check valves. :( -- Too many?

Steve
 
stever said:
dschlic1 said:
One of the big reasons for the increase in filter pressure was the installation of a check valve in the discharge of the filter. Check valve, while sometimes necessary, do produce a large amount of back pressure.

How many feet of pipe will a check-valve add? (I'm looking to you Mark S :roll: ) The way I have mine planned the water goes through three check valves. :( -- Too many?

Steve

Decent data for swing check valves are hard to come by but from what I have seen, they are usually 8-11 feet / inch of pipe diameter. So for 2" pipe, that is 16-22 feet of equivalent straight pipe.

However, it is important to keep this in perspective. At 45 GPM, this only contributes 0.3 PSI rise or 0.7 feet of head. So for 3 valves, that is about 1 PSI and 2.3 feet of head. At higher GPM it might be significant but I wouldn't worry about it too much.
 
dschlic1 said:
At 75 gpm the 2" check valve installed by the solar people added about 5 to 7 psi to the pump discharge pressure.

A swing check valve should not add that much pressure unless it was broken or installed improperly. Now the solar itself will add 5-7 PSI, perhaps that is what you are seeing? Or perhaps they actually installed a SPRING check valve instead of swing check valve. The former has much more head loss than the later.

When they added my solar, my pressure went up less than 1 PSI pretty much in line with available data on swing check valves. However, with the solar engaged, pressure goes up by 7 PSI which what should be expected.
 
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