You are right they have to be on a separate circuit. However, he has a box then it goes to a subpanel, and from there I assume they are on separate circuits. I am guessing that is in code.
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Thought I’d move back to here for my electrical blunders and projects.
I measured the voltage for my well pump and I’m pleased to know it’s just a 1/2hp 120 volt pump. I could power this with an inverter most likely. The breaker that goes to the pump house is a 20 Amp, so I could maybe get a 2KW with a higher surge/start rating. Since the box that actually has the breaker is attached to the house, I could keep a small battery bank inside. I wouldn’t want to leave the batteries in the pump house because it isn’t climate controlled in the slightest, even if it’s a brick building.
I also looked at all my breakers again, and the Service Disconnect 100 amp breaker is what goes to the House. That panel is full so I’ll likely need to get a transfer switch that just goes between the Mains panel and the sub panel in the house. With the transfer switch I could eventually migrate to solar battery backup and just run the genset to charge the batteries when the sun isn’t enough.
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There is a tax credit for a panel upgrade and 200a i should be standard service. ie they don’t charge extra. They were talking about 300a as standard, but I don’t know if that happened or not.
I would be tempted to look at a ‘smart panel’ similar to this:
https://us.ecoflow.com/products/smart-home-panel?
They let you control and prioritize everything.
That’s a lot of cash on the barrelhead. Maybe if I hit the lottery and can afford to actually GROUND the whole house.
With a regular manual transfer switch I could just re-wire it to a split phase inverter down the road.
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I agree but I believe at least part of it is covered under the tax rebate or deduction up to 3k.
House rewiring may also be covered, If it isn’t knob and tube wiring, and it is just two wires, you just need to replace the wires. The biggest pain about that is figuring out how to access the wires to pull the new ones through. Then doing all the replastering.
The actual ‘electrical’ part isn’t hard.
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Cody i am no expert here so take with a pinch concerning what may work , if you are wanting to run a 1/2hp i would be looking at a LF inverter with at least a 3kw and a surge of 6 or 9 and it needs to be a pure sine wave .
My 240v 5kw transformer less HF inverter will not even start my small compressor even with a empty tank , but the heavy toroidal 3kw LF one dont even batt an eyelid .
Dave
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I wish companies would label them better. Not sure where I’d go looking for one of those.
Would an inverter charger operate as a Low Frequency Inverter?
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The best way to check is the weight , most if not all HF inverters are very light, the heavy ones have transformers in them, t hat is the type i would recommend for anything that has a high start up surge .
Inverter chargers can be both ,most Chinese ones dont use heavy duty transformers i have a couple here that failed when trying to start a larger compressor of about 3 hp
Dave
PS from memory i think HF have a surge of double the out put for a few seconds , the LF have tripple the surge power for a lot longer
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I need to measure how far down the well goes, and how far down the water line actually is.
Right now for the time being our plan is to fill as many containers as possible with potable water, and I have two 55 gallon drums for flushing toilets and bird-bathing with.
I’d really like to get a big tank that is plumbed, maybe with a DC powered booster pump. Then I could just start the generator up to power the well for maybe an hour or so, fill the proposed cistern and then go back to powering the house.
I mentioned it in another thread but mom is going to have a plumber out in the near future to have a master shutoff right before the home plumbing, apparently we don’t have one right now and there’s multiple valves required to shut off flow to the house. I told her we should make it a Tee joint with valves to shut off the pump supply and one for the cistern. I may shell out for a food grade IBC tote and get the sun blocking cover to prevent algae. I could also just one at a time get 55 gallon food grade drums and expand as I go.
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If you know who drilled the well, you can call and ask. They normally keep records of it.
An ibc tote with a camper water pump would probably suffice. And be the easiest, you could only run one tap at a time, but that isn’t the end of the world either.
They do make essentially soft start boxes for well pumps as well as DC motors and variable frequency drives for ac motors.
You should get/borrow a clamping meter and that should have a max amp draw. Then you can measure the start up surge so you know what you need.
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You will still need to treat your stored water. Chlorinate it and then run your drinking water through a activated charcoal filter. For washing you would not need to filter the treated water.
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A soft starter might be a good beginning step. I hope I can just wire it in at the pressure switch or whatever it was I saw wired to the pump.
One thing that’s odd is my grandpa left the carcasses of multiple engine driven pumps outside the well house. Not sure if he was using those initially or if they were from when he’d pump from the pond to water his gardens.
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“Soft starter” jogged my memory. Years ago, with more kids around, we traveled and camped a lot. I got tired of buying ice (and running out), so I decided to buy a 12 volt refrigerator. Checking prices quickly cured me of the desire. An ice chest sized refir on 12 volts was going to cost about $600. I had some cast-off ups batteries scrounged from work, bought a 2000 watt/4000 watt surge Harbor Freight inverter for, I think, about $100 on sale, and a ~5 cubic foot refrigerator with a little freezer in it for about $125. Much more useful than the expensive 2 cu. ft. 12 volt box. I charged it, or tried, in parallel with the van battery.
The system worked pretty well, except that the inverter would fault and quit, trying to start the refrigerator about once a day. The refrigerator drew about 100 watts running. Getting, finally, to the point, I later found a used Heart Interface inverter-charger that that was (and is) rated at 1500 watts. We never had a problem with it running the refrigerator, or anything else within its rating. It has a built-in (software) soft start. With a heavy starting load, it lowers its output voltage for a short period, allowing it to spin up a pretty big motor. It must weigh ten times what the Harbor Freight inverter does, maybe 50 vs 5 pounds. That’s my personal first experience with Low Frequency vs High Frequency inverters. As a bonus, since it’s also a charger, we could get the deep cycle batteries to full charge, which was never possible with the van alternator, since they were cooler, and therefore higher voltage than the van battery.
Sorry for the many words. At least they don’t cost much 
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It might be cheaper to get a new pump… This one has a controller built-in, I don’t know if that includes soft start but I can’t think of what else would be on the controller that would be in a box. You would also need to replace the hose, and replacing the wire is usually good as well and you need the waterproof electric fittings. And some emergency rope to tie to it in case the wire and the hose breaks. And a bunch of chlorine to sanitize the well.
I know I’ll get grief over this, but I have a 48v 15k power jack inverter. I like these, they are cheap and easy to repair, they are modular design. You just change boards if they fail. I keep spare mosfits and a spare main board on hand. I would go at lest 24v Here’s an example; 6000W LF Split Phase Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter DC12V to AC 110V/220V/charger | eBay
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Hey if it works, it works.
Yeah luckily I’m starting from a totally clean slate as far as batteries are concerned. The 100w 12v panel I bought can go series or parallel so I can just get more later on.
No grief from here Al Frick.
The one you listed is made in Taiwan. Not mainland China. Says it weighs ~42 pounds.
Transformer core weights to give the LF electro-magnetic cycling stored-grunt adds up.
Low frequency is like old super slow speed engines . . . you need true mass effect for power delivery carry through.
And able to basic discrete board diagnostic out and repair is very much DYI.
My 1999 old TRACE 12VDC with only 2.5KW output weighs in at nearly 200 pounds. Used for 10 years by the original owner. Replaced in ~2009 with 48 volt HF Magnum.
S.U.
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The split phase would be really handy, and there is room for a breaker to make a charge circuit for it in standby on that panel.
I think I’ll still leave the Central Heat/AC units cut off though. I have a single outlet right below the breaker for the AC and Well Pump and I think one of the outbuildings.
@trikebuilder57 can this charge off of a 120v circuit or does it need to be 240v? I see it says it does both for output.
Edit: nevermind I see it only needs 120v input for charging.
I could run a charge circuit from inside the house when it’s energized and just have the batteries as a buffer.
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I may not have to replace my current pump. There is actually a second well drilled about 3 feet away from the current one. Not sure if it was the old well and wasn’t dug far enough, or what. I could maybe set up a 3 way valve and use a DC or higher efficiency pump in the other well casing.
I’ll need to get a better look at the second well.
Also I think the trashed pumps sitting in a pile are old jet pumps that likely burned out. Grandpa never threw anything away if it had a motor or was made of metal.
Mom thinks the well is 75 feet deep, and since the pond is fed by a spring and eyeballing the grade from the well to the pond I think that makes sense.
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That would be my guess or the casing collapsed. It might actually be capped.
It looks like the soft start just runs the current through a series of resistors to drop the inrush current for a short period of time, then uses a triac to bypass the resistors. They shouldn’t be very expensive.
The vfds appear to be doing the ac/dc dc/ac where the dc/ac conversion can vary the frequency, and are all solid state.
The prices bottomed out for these. But I don’t see it for well pumps specifically which have additional safety requirements because of the water.
This similar functionality to this was like 600 bucks 10-15 years ago when I was looking at 3-phase conversion.
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