Things you should know when choosing a pump
(what you get for your hard earned cash)

Not all pump manufacturers quote the power consumption of their pumps using input watts. Instead, some quote output watts which frequently bear no relationship to the actual power consumed. Indeed, if this figure is very low, it may well indicate the unit is poorly designed and inefficient.

Remember, what you pay for are the input watts, the output watts only relates to the pump's efficiency and not what it costs you to run it.

The Yamitsu 250 Wattpump shown above will consume between 207 watts to 250 watts at 240 volts depending on the workload.

At  - Yamitsu we quote input wattage as a measure of power consumption as this is what you pay for. We think this the most honest approach to selling our products.

As a rough guide: If you run a pump continuously day and night for one week it will cost approximately 1p for every watt of electricity used. I.e. a 250 watt pump will cost £2.50 per week (if run continuously).

Next you should look for the pump's performance (power to pump water). You should be aware that some of the smaller lower wattage or lower powered pumps, can have a serious drop-off in performance output when put to work.

To choose the correct pump for your system there is a simple rule of thumb. Take the volume (gallonage) of water in your pond and divide this figure by 2. For example a 1000 gallon pond needs a pump that is going to pump 500 gallons per hour (the entire contents of your pond every 2 hours) after all allowances have been made for frictional losses that will be encountered in your pipework. Using the figures quoted by some pump manufacturers, you would probably need to consider an 800-1000 gallon an hour pump!

Pumps are always under pressure. It is as if they are always pumping water uphill even when they are not. This resistance to flow is referred to as head. A reasonable length of pipe with some bends will reduce a pump's output because of;

It follows that the larger the pipe the less resistance and greater achievable water flow. Conversely the smaller the pipe the lower the possible head and reduced flow.

It should be noted that a lot of pumps do not have enough power to overcome a 5 metre head