how much sunlight is needed, exactly, for solar powered pond equipment to work? and does it work all-year round? and what happens when the light fades at night? im a bit sceptical about the reliability of these things.
http://www.pondkeepe...t-300-new/p1185
it says it has a battery for night times, but im presuming that has to be manually charged inside a house.
or even
http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item3cb909c5b8
it says 10000 hours... not sure what that would come to really, or if it would even last that long. think 10000 hours is roughly 400 days. but it wouldnt be on at night and morning, so probably 800ish. doubt it'd even get 100 days. anyone think its worth a try, since its only £18? it only does roughly 60 gallons an hour though, so 1 gallon a minute.
I wouldn't buy either of those. The pumps that those companies/manufacturers provide are honestly crap. I used to have 2-3 of those, the pumps barely put out 30GP/h, last usually only one season, and the solar panels they seem to use also just stop working.
If you're interested in using solar pumps I encourage you to do some DIY work by ordering your own pump, solar panel, and or battery seperately.
For example here's my solar setup for a 1000 gallon pond, the main pump does about 300-350GP/h and I have 2 more each doing around 150GP/h. You could have more or less depending on what you want:
I'm using 12V DC batteries w/ control boxes/timers to set schedules for the pumps as well as have them run at night time when there isn't sunlight. Using 10watt solar panels and they output plenty of juice to run the pumps constantly when it's sunny and charge the battery at the same time to last another 2-4 hours (depending on how direct the sunlight for the day was) that it uses to go at night.
Some example products you could use to achieve something like I have (just looking on ebay real quick):
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Example pump:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330719912428?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
Example solar panel:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/120890907098?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
You can buy those two together for about $70, tubing, etc. for it then may bring the total cost of that setup to around $80-90.
If you want good filtration you can get something like this to put the pump inside (it has two filter media before getting to the pump, I actually use this myself, the filters cost about $3 to replace, I wash mine out for a couple months and replace them after 6)
http://www.amazon.com/Sunterra-3371...id=1339943198&sr=8-1&keywords=pond+filter+box
So basically if you get all the parts, can sodar the wires correctly yourself, you can get a 350+GP/h pump, a filter, a 10watt solar panel, and tubing to run the pump to whatever you want for about $100. You can of course get a smaller pump, solar panel, etc. to save money depending on what you want. You can also as I have hook a 12V battery into the system to allow the pumps to work at night and not just when they are in direct sunlight.
The pump and solar panel I posted are the same type I have, have been using for 2 years, no trouble at all.
