# Booster pumps



## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

Got a job to re feed the booster pumps for the buildings domestic water supply. Building was built in 2005. 

1200 amp 600 volt service. Pumps are currently on 70a OCPD in an 800 amp MCC.

Generator is 300 amps. 

Booster pumps don't work when the power is out... but you can ride the elevators! They're off the generator!

This is kinda stupid.... Why would you not put the booster pump on the generator???

55 hours the power was out 1.5 months ago so they had no water!


On a related note, I could have gotten a large generator from another building for free... if the last hack had not disassembled most of it... Half of the engine is gone along with the control box. The main part is still there though!

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## glen1971 (Oct 10, 2012)

With the other loads will the generator be able to handle one booster pump? Is there room in the Emergency MCC to relocate the starter? Breaker for it and wall mount one?

A few years ago, the government and their infinite wisdom built a jail and about 1/3 of the receptacles in it were on the generator. May sound like alot, but one area of concern was they has about 4 in the entire kitchen. My dad got a hold of the electrician that built it and they said "wait til after they accept it and we can have the building set up to be almost all on the generator..". They did and never lost any sleep a couple of weeks later..


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## brian john (Mar 11, 2007)

Kevin_Essiambre said:


> *This is kinda stupid.... Why would you not put the booster pump on the generator???*
> 
> 55 hours the power was out 1.5 months ago so they had no water!
> 
> lk


Not at all these pumps are not considered life safety and pennies often rule the design.


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## MikeFL (Apr 16, 2016)

We require elevators in highrise to be on standby power and there's no requirement for domestic water booster pumps. At least last I knew. And the elevator requirement didn't come until after the hurricanes of '04-05.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

We put our booster pumps on vfd's 10 years ago to reduce wear on the check valves (we maintain pressure rather than cycle the pumps on and off). We moved all the controls from the plc to a stand alone controller then looped back the readings to the plc. Once power goes out the generator kicks in the drives automatically reset then go back to controlling the water pressure. We built the control panel so we added extra automation so if one pump has a problem the back up will kick in before we go to a fatal low pressure and require a boil water notice.

In 10 years we have had one check valve that needed to be rebuilt verses 2-3 per year. We can maintain the water pressure to a tighter number and the 50hp pumps do not stress the generator so we could have bought a smaller generator. The drives were used when we installed them for the test and they are still running so they do not seem to mind the transfer to the generator.


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## splatz (May 23, 2015)

Nice! 



gpop said:


> We put our booster pumps on vfd's 10 years ago to reduce wear on the check valves (we maintain pressure rather than cycle the pumps on and off). We moved all the controls from the plc to a stand alone controller then looped back the readings to the plc. Once power goes out the generator kicks in the drives automatically reset then go back to controlling the water pressure. We built the control panel so we added extra automation so if one pump has a problem the back up will kick in before we go to a fatal low pressure and require a boil water notice.
> 
> In 10 years we have had one check valve that needed to be rebuilt verses 2-3 per year. We can maintain the water pressure to a tighter number and the 50hp pumps do not stress the generator so we could have bought a smaller generator. The drives were used when we installed them for the test and they are still running so they do not seem to mind the transfer to the generator.


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## micromind (Aug 11, 2007)

Kevin_Essiambre said:


> Booster pumps don't work when the power is out... but you can ride the elevators! They're off the generator!


The solution is actually quite simple.......just fill buckets with water, put them in the elevator and send them to the upper floors.......


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## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

glen1971 said:


> With the other loads will the generator be able to handle one booster pump? Is there room in the Emergency MCC to relocate the starter? Breaker for it and wall mount one?
> 
> A few years ago, the government and their infinite wisdom built a jail and about 1/3 of the receptacles in it were on the generator. May sound like alot, but one area of concern was they has about 4 in the entire kitchen. My dad got a hold of the electrician that built it and they said "wait til after they accept it and we can have the building set up to be almost all on the generator..". They did and never lost any sleep a couple of weeks later..


There is actually 5 panels around the whole building that run off of the generator. 

And the pumps ate on a 70 amp OCPD but the primary pump is 7.5hp and the secondary pump is 10hp.

Secondary pump only runs when it thinks the primary pump needs help.

If you're using water when the power goes out, the generator will take a couple minutes to kick in and both pumps will run when they get power again. Hence the 70 amp breaker.

Oh and I forgot to mention, this is an old folks home.


Only thing I'm not looking forward to is having to climb the 13 stories of stairs to turn the generator off... elevators are gonna be out of service while we do the transfer.

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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

Kevin_Essiambre said:


> There is actually 5 panels around the whole building that run off of the generator.
> 
> And the pumps ate on a 70 amp OCPD but the primary pump is 7.5hp and the secondary pump is 10hp.
> 
> ...


sounds like 2 pumps each with there own pressure switch. Add a timer delay on relay set to 3 seconds on the secondary pump and it should relieve some stress of the generator. 
Or just wire one pump as some water during a outage (a little low on pressure) beats no water and a tripped generator thus no elevator.


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## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

gpop said:


> sounds like 2 pumps each with there own pressure switch. Add a timer delay on relay set to 3 seconds on the secondary pump and it should relieve some stress of the generator.
> Or just wire one pump as some water during a outage (a little low on pressure) beats no water and a tripped generator thus no elevator.


It's a specialty pump controller for the pumps. Those pumps only draw 9 amps and 11 amps according to my code book (didn't bother to look past the HP of the pumps so just using the table for amp rating in the code book). Boss doesn't seem to worried about putting it on the generator panel. When we are done the wiring I'll fire the generator up first to be sure it can handle the added load.

Pumps are wired with #8 I believe (might be #10) couldn't look long as we had to shut the pumps off to look in the controller. 

The job was bid at the beginning of October so there's no money to change anything. If we have an issue after the fact we will have to rectify the issue with a new PO.

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## MikeFL (Apr 16, 2016)

We normally do a booster pump for every 5th floor and it supplies the floor it lands on plus the 2 floors above and the 2 floors below. In a 13 story bldg that would make one booster pump for the 11th floor for floors 9-13, one booster pump for the 6th floor for floors 4-8 and floors 1-3 run off street pressure. I'm thinking that smaller pump is called for when water pressure is called for on the upper floors in which case that larger pump needs to be running. As we say in fire protection, we can't pump water that's not there.


Only reason I'm bringing this up is you may get zero water on the upper floors if all you're operating is the smaller pump. If the existing genset can't handle it, upsell!


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