If you are considering installing a booster pump to increase the water presuure to your home or business I would highly recommend taking a look at the e.sybox range from DAB.
In my case I have a 5000l water tank which is fed by my borehole which in turns feeds into the house and garden. The garden has a rudimentary irrigation system installed (I will be upgrading this in time so keep and eye out for that article). My problem was that the gravity pressure from the 5000l tank was not sufficient to really do very much watering also my solar gravity geysers installed on the roof were taking an age to fill up.
So I started to look at installing a booster pump and evaluating the options on the market. I looked at a number of different options including pump and pressure tank and a basic pump with a electronic pressure switch.
I had previous experience with the pump and electronic pressure switch as that is what I had installed to feed the solar geysers. I found this to be adequate but inclined to be very noisy and susceptible to air locks. I decided against this option.
Friends of mine had installed the pump and pressure tank to boost pressure and again this was noisy and in addition the pumps had a inclination to spike energy usage as startup. Normally the energy usage spike would not be a problem however I am in the process of planning to go off-grid with a solar system and this is a big problem for a solar system to cope with. Power hogs can make your solar installation very expensive so I was also looking to get the most energy efficient pump I could find.
That’s how I came to look seriously at the e.sybox range from DAB. The e.sybox uses the new 3-rotor model to create constant pressure according to the system demands and thus an optimization of energy consumption. In basic terms this means that they have a variable speed drive motor with 3-rotors which slowly winds up to the desired revs per minute. What this means is that there is not the power usage spike of fixed RPM pumps and this is very good for solar inverters that tend to freak out if there is a power usage spike.
The next thing that convinced me was the fact that these pumps are much quieter than any others that I have seen to date. With my e.sybox mini 3 spinning flat out at 4000+ RPM you can’t hear it from the next room, a far better situation than the screaming whine of the traditional booster pump which would wake a zombie when it kicks in at midnight.
They are also very well designed and have a compact form factor. In fact you just need to plumb in the inlet and outlet pipes and plug it in to an electric wall socket and that’s it – no fancy electric or plumbing required. I started out by mounting the pump on it’s built in feet on the ground but after some thought decided that it would be better wall mounted. DAB recommend that these pumps are installed inside but I have mounted mine on an outside wall underneath the eves of the house so it will get protection from rain and sun.
The beauty is that these pumps are self priming from up to 8m underground. This was not a concern for me as the 5000l tank is well above the DAB pump so gravity does that job most effectively. This also means that when we do have a power cut the 5000l tank can still feed the house. There appears to be no significant loss of gravity pressure at the taps when the pump is off.
When the pump is on as soon as you open a tap it kicks in and starts to pump water under pressure that you can set from the built in LED screen which the pump will maintain. Mine is set at 2.7 bar which maybe a little to much and I may adjust this. If you turn on a second tap or flush a toilet you will hear the pumps variable speed motor kick up a gear and the pressure is maintained. I have used three sprinklers in the garden and running water in the house and the pump is more than capable of maintaining that. I have 3/4 inch hose pipe in the garden and if I leave a pipe with no restriction this cause the pump to reach it’s maximum RPM and there is reduced pressure throughout the rest of the system. This is not a problem for me but worth mentioning, I ended up putting a water stop connector on the hose which allowed me to regulate the flow.
Overall I am really pleased with the e.sybox mini 3 DAB pump. I bought mine from Driptech Glenara and I was assisted in installation by Canaan, an independent irrigation contractor who I would highly recommend. He can be contacted on +263 77 290 8263. I had the wall bracket mount custom made by Thermotech.