Alternative Energy

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

I kept the water flowing through mine at a pretty good clip, but I experimented with restricting the flow and you're right. The output can get extremely hot! And once the pool got up into the 80's, even with the decent flow I had, the output was pretty hot. And I think that pump only used about 100-150 watts.

The pump for the koi pond in my front yard is at least twice as big as that other pump was and between it and the lights, there's less than 400 watts being used. I used to run it all off a small inverter and marine battery in the generator shed, and would trickle-charge the battery off the grid with a standard charger. Another proof-of-concept thing. I'd determined that a single 150-watt panel on the roof of that building would be more than enough for the pond if I cycled the pump to run maybe 10 minutes out of every hour. But the cost of the panels never got low enough for me to finish the project.