long story… but I’m tired of hiking 5-gallon pails of water to the bathroom upstairs where I have my fishtanks this is buckets of rainwater. now I can have the water catch system behind the bathroom outside in the corner where water comes down… so that I can have a hose all the way to the bathroom window… what I need is a pump with a long cord that I can leave in the trough so all I have to do is… plug in the pump and just use the water from the hose upstairs into the fish tanks lol… any good ideas of inexpensive but strong enough to pump water to a second story window? lol
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How about a small sump pump? That should have enough power…
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Vivosun sells a submersible pump
You can hook up 1/2 inch x 20 ft/50ft Vinyl tubing to the pump and run up to the second floor
Just plug the pump in and watch the water disappear
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I don’t think u will find a “cheap” pump that will push liquid up 15ft. Most pumps will state thier lifting capacity. But just like everything else they likely to exaggerate.
This one says 26ft lift but I think it needs to be submerged at least a foot underwater
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This is probably a good bet on the inexpensive side. 1/10 HP and it has a 42ft head lift which would be more than enough to get to your second floor. They’re also doing a 20-25% off coupon for a single item until Monday if you’re a rewards member, which is free and easy to sign up for online. Good Luck!
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I would use our well water. But there is something in it that was killing my fish hardness was normal no nitrates or nitrites. For all intents and purposes it was perfect. But something in it that I could not test for. Also mom and I went to bottle water and several Amish families have had family members up and down the road that died from cancer 3 from leukemia. 2 not more than 1/4 mile from us. And mom was diagnosed with apl leukemia day after we went to bottle water. There is something in this water that is not good.
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Could be minerals, the deeper the well the more minerals that are collected as rain settles. Rain and well are not the same. The rain water I catch has nearly zero minerals, my well has a total dissolved solids count of 730. Now what minerals you may or may not have in your well water is the unknown. Some are toxic depending on what is found where you are, and who else do you share an aquifer with. What is the ph? Since it is your well I would lab test for toxic minerals. Ph and TDS test myself.
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Your best bet an cheapest way is probably to get a pond fountain pump. I used to use a pump that could put out a 12-15ft fountain in a old system were the tanks were on the floor 2 stories down. An the grow was 2 floors up. We connected it via hoses to flood 15 individual sites, an it would flood them in 3-5 mins. You’ll probably find pumps sold for pond display fountains are quite abit cheaper than those sold to the hydroponic community aswell.
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Don’t bet on it. I worked for a pond installation company for 10 years, thats called
money to burn". Both of them (hydroponics and pond shops) are for discretionary income and priced accordingly.
Sump pump at home depot / lowes might be your cheapest bet (do you need a float switch? likely not, so look for ones without it built in, they are cheaper). Also can look for “Pool cover de-watering pumps” which hook to your garden hose, but some might not have the head height. THAT is the important thing to look for. How many GPH at what head height.
And it DOES matter!
I can give you two pumps, with the same GPH, and one might be perfect, the other will, and I mean WILL fail due to the wrong usage. for example:
Pumps are say 3000GPH.
Pump 1 has a head height of 42ft
Pump 2 has a head height of 8ft
Using pump 1 on a no head / minimal head installation (without valving it to provide backpressure) will cause the pump to spin faster, and burn up bearings before its time. It NEEDS resistance.
Using pump 2 on an installation where there IS head height, 2nd floor is 10ft up (and calculate every 10ft of horizontal hose as 1ft of vertical head height), that pump will struggle to move water and will burn up windings / electronics inside.
Most pumps have a GPH / Head Height curve / chart to reference… Dont forget to include the head height from horizontal hoses (1ft of head for 10ft of horizontal hose) when figuring out your needs…
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I wish it was just the minerals. The testing I did did minerals GH. KH. Nitrate nitrates. Ammonia. Etc. Everything was perfect for fish. At least on paper. What I can’t test for are benzenes. Etc. I live 20 minutes from ogdensburg ny. Supposedly there was a chemical spill some decades ago there. I need to ask my friend about that
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If I suspect something like Benzene, I’d go for something that’s relatively comprehensive and not via the town/city. Wait until there has been a sufficient time between rainfall depending on well depth and then do some samples.
I haven’t used these folk, but here’s an example:
https://www.theperfectwater.com/full-laboratory-water-test.html
While not cheap, it’s actually less expensive than I would have expected for such a panel. The panel covers a fairly broad range of industrial contaminants along with sine pesticides. Benzene … nasty stuff for health.
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I have a nice sized pond, and I run several hydro grows simultaneously. I currently have about a dozen pumps, but have burned through about that twice that many over the years. Oh, and that doesn’t even include the sump or septic pumps that I have or burned through. Needless to say, I have lots of experience with all types of pumps, AND - I sometime use a pump to do almost exactly what you’re looking to do (move water up a flight of stairs). Although in my case, I move the water up two floors instead of just one.
After trying a number of my smaller pumps, including the 1/10th and 1/6th HP pumps, I finally settled on this one:
https://www.superiorpump.com/products/utility/91250.html
I normally use it as a feed pump in my ebb and flow setup, but it gets the job done to move it up the stairs just fine. It also comes with the correct thread adapter for a garden hose, which my larger pumps don’t have - so it’s very convenient.
I’m not sure what the retail price is, but there’s a new one listed on ebay right now (in the US) for about $69 (delivery included).
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You could blood test the fish for benzene , i mea technically some could. It does things to blood cells.
One other thought on pumps. Pond / aquarium pumps vs sump pumps. One is made to run continuously, one is not!! Sure, you can run a sump pump all the time as a circulation pump, but its terribly inefficient with electricity. Pumps are usually designed for a purpose, ie. constant circulation, occasional draining, etc. Paying more for a pond pump just to transfer water you’ll never recoup the difference. Just buy a sump pump / pool cover pump, much cheaper, and since its occasional use, the electrical inefficiency doesn’t add up to much.
I got the pump im on about for £25 uk an it was (from what i remember) a 15-25ft display fountain. Because of the price i ended up buying 2 of them. Each pump was actually a huge bit of kit about a 1 ft long an about 1/3 ft wide. It was like a mini cannon with a spout on the top were the fountain would come out. I actually removed the casing so i could use the actual pump that were inside which itself was quite a big piece of kit. An your right, i did actually get them from one of those home depo type stores.
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That is a fleet of tanks 
Very cool!
You have humidity mediation yes? I used to propagate coral, and had 1400 gallons of SW tanks in the basement at one time. Added a heat exchanger to help with humidity issues and worked awesome. They are pricey, but if you calculate how much evaporation you have, it might be worth it to look into (1400g system would evaporate 15g a day!!!) Granted I had a lot more water motion. But before the heat exchanger, I literally had a fan blowing out the window 24x7x365 and I live in the northeast (so that meant all winter too! hence the need for the heat exchanger). One day that fan died while at work. Came home to my main floor living room windows (14 windows, 24" wide x 7’ tall, crank-out style) ALL looking like shower doors, mid-shower, with the water condensing and dripping off them. And the house felt like a humid rainforest!
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old house mostly wood soaks up the moisture… plus I have a ac going in my computer room that sucks moisture out too… it helps that the tanks are in the bathroom lol