How To Use 2 Garden Pond Submersible Pond Pumps and Save Money
Two submersible pumps in a fish pond are almost always better than one operating pond pump.
2 Pumps can save you a lot of electricity
My pond is outside my bedroom window. At night the waterfall "noise" is just a bit too much for sound sleep. For this reason we switch the waterfall off every night and the fish do not die despite which almost certainly be the case if we only had a single pond pump working. You see I have a second much smaller pump feeding the pond bio filter 24/7. This second pump is not big enough to feed the waterfall. It is big enough to supply the oxygen needs of the pond filter and that's what's important to keep the fish alive.
After all the waterfall is mainly used for aesthetic reasons in my case even though during the day time when it does run it helps pond water oxygenation.
Pond pump must run 24/7 ...
Never switch off your pond pump for more than a few minutes if you keep fish. A pump in a fish pond serves a very important reason. Of course it circulates the water and it drives a fountain or a waterfall. Yes of course it adds character and movement to your system. However its most important job is to provide life-giving oxygen to bacteria in the fish pond bio filter. A pump works like your heart ... the heart continuously replenishes your vital organs with freshly oxygenated blood. A pump in a pond does the same ... it supplies freshly oxygenated water to the pond bio filter. Now back to the 2 pumps are better story ....
The major ongoing cost in a pond is electricity to run the pumps ...
1. The basic formula for calculating your annual electric pump running cost starting with amps is as follows
Voltage x Amps x 24 divided by 1,000 gives kilowatt-hrs (units) of electricity consumed every day.
Amps are always shown on the pump. Voltage is your mains voltage normally 110, 220, or 240
You can find unit cost per kilowatt hour on your electricity bill or account. Multiply the above answer by this unit cost and then by 365 to get annual cost.
Here's an example
amps x voltage = watts
In USA voltage is 110, in most other countries it is 220 or 240 volts.
So in USA if amps = 0.5 and voltage is 110 the watts = 55
If unit cost is 8.3 cents then electric pump costs 55 x 8.76 x 8.3/100
= $39.98 per year
2. The basic formula for calculating your annual cost starting with watts is as follows
Look on the pump box and if you can find watts consumed multiply this by 8.76 and you will get units (kWhrs) of electricity consumed every year by your pump.
Go to your electricity bill find cost per unit and you can work out running cost of the pump.
Many pumps consume more than 400 watts and are totally unnecessary for the pond's situation in by far the majority of cases. This little equation can save you lots of money when you are about to select a pump. The running cost is often far more important than the purchasing cost.
To buy two pumps, if selected correctly, is often no more expensive than buying a single larger pump. However being able to switch off the waterfall pump (normally the bigger of the two pumps) can save an enormous amount of money over the lifetime of the pond.
The fish do not mind the waterfall being switched off most of the time and if you are at work you cannot enjoy the sights and sounds of the waterfall - so why waste electricity. Furthermore if one pump does break down you can keep your biofilter alive by using the second (spare) pump.
In one of my calculators you are shown how to calculate how much you will be able to save by using two pumps in your pond. In the example I use in the calculator $309 is saved over 3 years
