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The well pump was installed by a delightful service from Rock River, Wyoming. These people came out and did a great job, so I want to advertise them:
Guffy Windmill and Well Service, Inc., PO Box 5, 666 White St., Rock River WY 82083, 308-378-2006, guffeywindmill@hotmail.com
They are pictured on the job at right.
We bought a Grundfos 3SQF3 pump from a reputable on-line dealer and had no problems with delivery or having the pump work. We were able to obtain both the pump and the CU200 pump controller - this is the "not just basic" version because we wanted the possibility of more than one power source, such as running the pump from an AC generator if necessary - for just under $2000.
We chose this pump because:
(a) We had done some homework, and knew that these pumps from Grundfos would run well from solar DC direct power, and we knew that we were NOT pumping directly from the well into a pressure tank for the house. Many normal, on-grid installations have an AC pump in the well that directly pressurizes a pressure tank in the home to provide pressure to domestic water. In our case, we did not want our pressurization to depend on a relatively high power pump all the way from the well, nor did we want our pressurization to depend on whether the sun was up! We also did not want to dig a super-long trench to try to place a water storage tank uphill from the cabin and risk having everything freeze in our extremely harsh winters. A good basic article on various solar-powered well pump options can be found in Home Power magazine, Issue 125, June/July 2008.
(b) My brother had bought an SQFlex pump from Grundfos, installed it himself, and it has worked extremely well. Word of mouth and direct experience
Therefore, our design was to have the solar pump fill a 160 gallon storage tank in the cabin utility area, controlled using a float switch. The utility area has a floor drain - just in case! We also bought several float switches in case we needed to change one out on short notice. So far, it's worked very reliably!
Click here to continue to a page about the solar power to the pump.
