Irrigation pump deadhead issues with pump saver plus.

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Steelwinky

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I’m hoping someone with a little better understanding of how a pump saver works can help me out. I’m running an irrigation pump direct with no pressure tank or pressure switch. Basically, I turn it on only to water the yard. I bought a pump saver 233p hoping it might save my pump if anything goes haywire. After installing it, I let the pump suck a little air to try and create a dry well scenario. The pump saver shut the pump down as it should have. My main concern is pump dead head though. I shut the water valve off on the pump while it was running, hoping this would create a deadhead pump trip. It did not. My sensitivity is turned all the way up, so that’s not in play here.

Should the pump saver shut the pump down immediately upon a deadhead situation? What is the pump saver detecting that tells it to shut down in the event of a deadhead?

I hope someone can help me understand this a little better. As it stands, I’m not confident the pump will shut of if there is a blockage in my hose, or if a valve shuts off accidentally.
 

Reach4

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Pump saver monitors current. In the case of deadhead or no water, current drops. You will have to do a calibration to get the trip level correct for your pump.
 

Steelwinky

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Pump saver monitors current. In the case of deadhead or no water, current drops. You will have to do a calibration to get the trip level correct for your pump.
So if the saver shuts down the pump when I have a dry well, which it does, then why is it not doing it when flow is prevented by closing the valve. Maybe I’m calibrating it wrong? I’d guessed that if the device detected the current drop on the dry well side, it would’ve also detected it on the dead head side. I am wary of burning my pump up, but did let it run for a bit in the deadhead state to see if it would detect it. No luck
 

Steelwinky

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I’m just posting this in case someone has the same questions in the future. I ran my pump with the valve open and the system watering normally. The amperage while operating normally ranged from 7.99 to 8.04. I then introduced air into the system to simulate a dry well condition. The amperage dropped to 7.29 very quickly and then the pump saver shut off the pump.

Pump shut off, relative to a dead head, was a little different. With the pump running I closed all sprinkler a valves. The pump continued to run for quite some time and the pump saver eventually shut it off. This took about 30 minutes. I was concerned about burning something up, the motor warmed up a bit, but the intake area didn’t seem too bad. Amperage seemed to stay around 7.6 amps while this was going on. When the pump finally shut down, I’m not sure what the amps were at. It happened quickly when it did. I actually tried this several times with no damage to the pump(I assume). As of now, the pump seems to be working as good as it ever has. So based on this little experiment, I’m confident the pump saver is doing its job.
 

Valveman

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I would have thought the amps would drop much more than that when pumping air? The Pump saver looks for about a 25% drop in amps before shutting the pump off. I am guessing it dropped lower than 7.29 before it was shut off. Jet pumps do not drop in amps very much when the flow is restricted. The jet in the pump is always working at max pressure anyway, so restricting doesn't make much difference to the pump.
 

Steelwinky

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I would have thought the amps would drop much more than that when pumping air? The Pump saver looks for about a 25% drop in amps before shutting the pump off. I am guessing it dropped lower than 7.29 before it was shut off. Jet pumps do not drop in amps very much when the flow is restricted. The jet in the pump is always working at max pressure anyway, so restricting doesn't make much difference to the pump.
I have the sensitivity set to max, i wanted it to shut off asap after pumping air. I was surprised it shut down at 7.29. It could be that the amps were dropping fast and 7.29 was the last I could see on the meter before the pump shut off.

Relative to a blockage, should I be concerned it takes such a long time for the pump to shut down? Is it damaging the pump running that long restricted? What finally causes the amp drop while it’s restricted? Is the water finally turning to steam and essentially creating basically a dry well scenario?
 

Valveman

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Relative to a blockage, should I be concerned it takes such a long time for the pump to shut down? Is it damaging the pump running that long restricted? What finally causes the amp drop while it’s restricted? Is the water finally turning to steam and essentially creating basically a dry well scenario?
Yep.
 
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