Wannabe Farms

When the weather is cold, the only thing we can do is make ice. Here Kelly is flooding the ice on the pond to resurface it for skating. Last year we pulled about 300-400 feet of hose from the house to the pond and filled garbage pails and dumping them where the surface was rough. This would take all night and was a physically intensive job. This year we decided pumping the water from below the ice with a pump near by would provide more water and pressure and eliminate a few hundred feed of hose. We tried a small electric utility pump from Home Depot. It worked alright but the flow and pressure still left something to be desired. I was at TSC and saw a Hypro Roller pump that attaches to the PTO on the tractor. The pump flow rate is rated at 22.5gpm and 300psi.

I mounted the pump on a scrap 2×4 and added 2 pieces of chain + spring to prevent the pump from rotating with the PTO. The pipe on the right side is the input and the left side is the output. Right now I have two output valves, I leave one partially open to leak pressure in the event a hose becomes kinked which would cause the pressure to exceed the hose rating (200psi). In time I’ll add a pressure relief valve and pressure gauge to save making a puddle under the tractor. Right now the best flow/pressure is running the tractor at about 1500rpm, with the relief valve we should be able to drop that down to 1000rpm. The pump works very well with the resurfacer we received for Christmas. This new setup takes us a little over an hour from start to finish and with practice this time should improve. Now off to play hockey

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.