I bought this 26-gallon tank on Amazon. It is pretty nice, but it won’t pump liquid above the drain valve. I thought if I had lots of liquid the pressure would push it through, but it does not. Got any ideas on how to rig a pump to my tank to make the stream flow higher for my potted figs?
BTW, if you buy one of these tanks it does not fit well in a Gorilla cart medium or large. It only works on a flatbed cart, and it slides around on the cart and needs to be strapped down.
All learned today from the school of hard knocks! (I had bought it to use in an old Gorilla cart.)
Well, you can plumb in a 12V pump. Chapin has a 1 GPM pump that’s like $15 at Home Depot or Amazon right now, not sure how good it is. Higher flow rates will cost more. I haven’t done this personally, but I think basically you’ll want to:
Mount the pump on the tank
Use a hole saw to drill a hole for the intake, and add a bulkhead fitting. You can either do this on the side of the tank near the bottom (like the drain valve that’s already on there), or do it at the top and add some hose inside the tank with the end sitting at the bottom of the tank.
Run hose from the bulkhead to the inlet on the pump. This will need some kind of filtration/strainer—if you run hose inside the tank, you can add a barbed strainer to the end of the hose; if not, it’ll need to be added inline in the intake hose. The pump manual will probably specify the mesh of the strainer.
Run hose off the pump outlet; you’ll probably want some kind of wand/nozzle on the end.
(Optional, but very helpful) Add in a return/bypass line on the outlet side (and maybe also a pressure gauge). You can get a manifold for this, or just add a tee and a valve in the outlet line. You’ll run the return line back into the tank (by drilling a hole/adding another bulkhead at the top), which will help with mixing your fertilizer and will also let you control the flow rate.
You can probably find some YouTube videos on how to do this. I’m not able to post links, but there’s one by Harper Growing Solutions that seemed to have most of the details. I’d add a couple caveats: they didn’t put a filter on the intake side (apparently they have another video about that), and relying on the return line for agitation only goes so far. The latter is probably not relevant for your fertilizer, but some chemicals need more vigorous agitation (usually this is pointed out on the label).
I don’t know much about batteries, but from some quick googling, you’ll probably want a deep-cycle 12V battery and a trickle charger to recharge it after you use it. Apparently regular batteries are made to provide a short burst of power and will be degraded if they discharge too much. Maybe someone else who knows more can weigh in?
