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180g Tank Build - 11 mos. and counting.

Tuning the snapper for BEP - some experimentation

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Well, I finally finished installing the snapper pump. I learned a few things along the way and I'll try to give you as unbiased account as I can here.

First thing - I'm going to take a quick tangent here and report some about my personal experience with reeflo quality. I opened up my brand new reeflo pump and found the dart impeller cracked right through the middle upon arrival. It was as if someone had tightened it too much or it was subjected to an extreme temperature difference and the shaft expanded faster than the impeller and split it. Since I didn't want to run with the dart impeller anyway, I turned my attention to the snapper impeller and found that it had been drilled at an angle so that it wobbles a bit when you spin it on the shaft by hand. I can only imagine that this will wear the seal quickly and lead to a reduced lifespan for the pump and possibly some efficiency loss. I wasn't too impressed. I quickly took some pictures and sent them off to customer support at reeflo. Though I did get a quick response after my initial email stating that some replacement impellers would go in the mail immediately via USPS priority mail, they have not shown up more than a week later and I'm no longer getting response from reeflo via email. Ugh.

I put the wobbly snapper on the pump and plumbed it into the system to replace the Gen X 55hp pump I have been using for the past few years. I chose the gen x pump because I used to have my sump in the basement and pump the water back to the main floor. Since, I have finished my basement and moved the aquarium downstairs, so I don't need a high head pump. I used all of my old manifold and added a couple new 1" drops for expansion and my hurricone skimmer. Before disconnecting the old pump (by the way, supposed to be a 1150 gph, 28ft max head, 170W pump), I hooked up the kill-a-watt to find that it was still drawing a healthy 300W! That's a lot of juice! I removed the Gen X and moved it to the side and installed the snapper (2600 gph, max 11' head, rated at avg 94 watts or peak 105 watts). The kill-a-watt measured the snapper running at 153 watts without any tuning. I installed a valve on the business end of the pump and was eager to throttle it back to see the magic. To my disappointment, the wattage dropped from 153 watts to 147 watts with a fairly aggressive throttling. While I was happy to see myself save 150W (about $10 / month where I live), I was expecting a bit more.

So, why do you think I'm getting such a different number than advertised? Why does throttling make such little impact? I've basically got a 1.5" all the way to the delivery points if you consider that I have pipes in parallel. The highest drop is probably 7', but the average drop is probably 4' or less measured from the water line in my sump to where the water dumps out. Like I said, I suspect the wobble in the impeller accounts for some of the efficiency loss, but I can't imagine that it's the largest factor. My gut says that the specs on these pumps aren't regulated by anything but the reflection of the value of the brand and that maybe everyone fudges the numbers to look better than they really are... I'd be interested to hear YOUR take

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Comments

  1. Midnight's Avatar
    Where would I be able to find a meter locally? I will hook it to my dart and check it
  2. blennyman's Avatar
    http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internation...=measure+watts

    I think they sell these at Lowes and Home Depot. I got a cheaper knock-off at Lowes.

    The kill-a-watt is sophisticated enough to factor in time whereas the model I ended up purchasing only takes and instantaneous reading.
  3. fridmani1's Avatar
    I have a regular or the "real" kill-a-watt and I have a Dart impeller on my Reeflo pump.

    I've never actually connected the pump to the kill-a-watt before so I thought I'd give it a try. I have the bluefin motor since I have a problem with my original pump where if it lost power it would not restart on it own. I would have to manually turn the screw on the back to get it going. Since I was getting a re-built pump in replacement I asked if I could have the motor that came with the "Gold" version of the pump. They said yes and here are the results that I found with this motor:

    Pump wide open: 145 Watts
    Pump about 60% 125 Watts
    Pump closed: 115 Watts

    So it seems that this motor might be more efficient. What motor do you have on your pump?
  4. Midnight's Avatar
    No meter at the Lowe's, I will have to order one. I am curious how mine compares.
  5. Midnight's Avatar
    Ok, I found a Kill o watt meter at home depot. I am getting 145 watts with my pump wide open and about 6 feet of head. When I closed the valve all the way I was getting 125. This is running the Dart impeller.

    I also tested my salt tank pump:
    Model 100PX - equal to Iwaki MD40 Pressure rated
    790gph max flow
    21 foot max head pressure
    120 watts
    3/4" MPT in/out
    Footprint 5 x 14

    it measured 100 watts at 7 feet of head
  6. blennyman's Avatar
    Cool! Thanks for the data. I'm going to do a bit more with measurements on my system. Today, I got my hands on an actual kill-o-watt so I can make sure we're comparing apples to apples. Fridmani1 - I was just at the reeflo site and it looks like the GOLD version is supposed to be the same efficiency as the standard if you look at the standard snapper impeller setup.
  7. blennyman's Avatar
    More data - Using the kill-o-watt:

    Wobbly snapper impeller:
    mostly open, but under load - 135W
    completely closed - 119W

    Dart impeller:
    mostly open, but under load - 155W
    completely closed - 135W

    New bushing on impeller (no longer wobbly):
    Same as the wobbly version...
  8. Midnight's Avatar
    It seems as though your motor isn't cutting the mustard, compared to me and fridmani1. As far as I know my two snapper/darts have the standard motor in them. I did not ever specify a gold version.
  9. blennyman's Avatar
    Yeah - I tend to agree. Probably got a 'hot' motor. Working in the electronics industry, I guess it doesn't surprise me too much to see something deviate from spec by +/- 10% - that's a pretty common tolerance. ...or possibly the kill-o-watt came off the assembly line in china at 5:00 on a Friday. The tradeoff of the 'hot' motor scenario is likely that my motor can handle an equivalent head load of 10% more and also gets hotter. Not a big deal. What I'm more worried about (since the dart impeller seems to be close) is that the snapper impeller performs ~25-30% above spec - which is wasted energy from my point of view. Makes me think there's an impeller specific defect there. I requested a new snapper impeller - we'll see if I get one.