Pump water off inground pool cover

[amdobos]

I'm a proponent of reclaiming pool cover surface water rather than simply pumping to drainage.
Also, I maintain a 3,000 square foot garden, located some 500 feet away from the pool.
With an artesian well and no city water, I've previously pumped water into 30-gallon drums, hauled them to the garden, then pumped out the barrels.
This takes much time and effort, and the water flow from barrels into the garden is expectedly weak.

So...
1 - Would incorporating a pressure washer at the end of the run significantly speed up the actual watering of the garden?
2 - Would a powerful enough pump omit the need for filling multiple drums and allow me to pump directly from the pool cover to the garden?
3 - Can you suggest a more efficient alternative method of getting water to my garden?

Thanks in advance!
-A

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

1 - Would incorporating a pressure washer at the end of the run significantly speed up the actual watering of the garden?

End of what run?

Pressure wash what? The flowers?

2 - Would a powerful enough pump omit the need for filling multiple drums and allow me to pump directly from the pool cover to the garden?

Why do you think a more powerful pump is needed?

Point the pump hose output onto the garden soil.

3 - Can you suggest a more efficient alternative method of getting water to my garden?

Connect some type of oscillating lawn sprinkler to the pump output and let it spray on your garden.

 

[amdobos]

Hi, ajw22:
Thanks for weighing in.
The run to which I'm referring is: pool cover water is the starting point, pumping that water into 30 gallon drums is next, then transporting drums to garden, and finally pumping water out of the drums.
The pump I have does not provide much pressure at all as it's designed simply to evacuate the pool cover.
When I use it to pump out the 30 gallon drum at the garden site, there's very little pressure in my garden hose nozzle.
That's why I thought a pressure washer or more robust pump would provide increased pressure and allow me to spray the garden with authority.

Make sense?
-A

 

[ajw22]

There are pumps designed to move large volumes of water at low pressures and low volumes of water at high pressures.

Pool, cover, and submersible pumps are designed to move high flow at low pressure.

A pressure washer is an example of a pump designed to move low volumes of water at high pressure. However, a pressure washer does not have the suction intake to pick up water directly from your pool cover.

Maybe @mas985 knows of pumps that can suction from a cover, move water a distance in a hose, and eject it with pressure through a garden hose nozzle to create a spray.

 

[amdobos]

Hi, ajw22:
Appreciate the clarification re: pumps.

Agreed... my pool cover pump moves high flow at low pressure, and pressure washers move low volumes of water at high pressure.
Given that, would connecting a long hose to my pool pump (currently sitting in the pool cover water) and also attaching a pressure washer at the other end near my garden work?
That is, would the modest pressure provided by the cover pump provide sufficient flow/pressure for the pressure washer to perform?

Thanks,
-A

 

[mas985]

Most pressure washer require a flooded suction (i.e. positive pressure) so that doesn't seem like a good solution to me for direct suction from the cover to the garden.

1 - Would incorporating a pressure washer at the end of the run significantly speed up the actual watering of the garden?

Because of the above limitation of pressure washers, this would only work if drawing from the bottom of barrels but pressure washers are usually very low flow <10GPM so it probably would not improve the speed. Simply allowing the barrels to drain through a larger opening would probably be faster.

2 - Would a powerful enough pump omit the need for filling multiple drums and allow me to pump directly from the pool cover to the garden?

500' is a long distance. How were you planning to transfer the water from the pool cover to the garden?

3 - Can you suggest a more efficient alternative method of getting water to my garden?

Can you give us a lot more detail/pictures of the pool, garden, elevation profiles, etc.

Gravity drain is the easiest but does not always work.

Agreed... my pool cover pump moves high flow at low pressure, and pressure washers move low volumes of water at high pressure.
Given that, would connecting a long hose to my pool pump (currently sitting in the pool cover water) and also attaching a pressure washer at the other end near my garden work?

A cover pump should be sufficient to push water to the garden if you get a big enough one. Were you planning on using 500' of garden hose. How were you going to handle that much hose?

Why do you need the pressure washer at the end? Just use a low flow drip system. The key is use a hose parallel dividing system to take the higher flow of the pump to multiple locations in the garden each at a lower flow.

Another thought is to have a barrel close to the pool that is filled up by the cover pump and then have that gravity drain to the garden through small landscape tubing.

 

[mas985]

If you use a pump like this:

Amazon.com

And using 500' of 1/2" garden hose or landscape hose, would result in a flow rate of somewhere around 2-3 GPM which is not very high but that is ok if you use a distribution system in the garden.

Again, if you use a barrel near the pool and gravity fed via the same hose, it would probably be less than 1 gpm but would still work. This might be a better permanent solution if you can route landscape hose from the pool to the garden.

Note that in either case, adding a pressure washer does nothing in terms of increasing flow rate. The flow into the pressure washer is the limiting factor.

 

[amdobos]

Hello, mas985...
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
You've given me much to consider and I intend to respond to all you've provided.
Unfortunately, it'll have to wait until tomorrow as I have a previous commitment just now.
Again, thanks and I'll carefully review everything.
Best,
-A