How far to mount water pump from water tank???

[Dragonryder]

Hello again. I'm just full of questions here lately. I'm coming to the end of the build and am finishing up some major projects.

Can anyone tell me how far away from the water tank I can mount the water pump? I was hoping that I could go about five feet away.

Any help would be appreciated.

[chorizon]

Check out the specs on the pump(s) you are looking at.

It doesn't matter how very away you mount the pump horizontally, so much that it matters how much higher (vertically) you will be mounting the pump vs. the H20 tank.

Flow rate on pumps is measured by head-height, i.e. how much higher the pump is than what you are trying to pump.
Five feet doesn't seem like very far, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[Arne]

mount the pump as close to the tank as you can.... That's why they call it a 'pump', not a suction device.

[Dragonryder]

Thank you for the replies. The pump will be mounted at or below the level of the tank. So I'm guessing that gravity will help a little. Now, of course the faucet will be up hill. I'm so close that I can actually see the end.

Mother Nature is doing her best to keep me from working on it but I'm working between the rain drops. We've had about three days of dry weather in about the last three weeks and more rain is on the way. It's hard to build outside. I figure that I still have about two decent weeks of weather, worth of work left on it. Slowly but surely.

[48Rob]

5' horizontally isn't too far.

Keeping the pump in the same general plane as the outlet on the tank will assure plenty of pressure to deliver the water from the tank, to the pump.

If mounted slightly higher than the outlet, you could have an issue when the tank is nearly empty and there isn't enough head pressure to push the water to the pump.

Most pumps actually are pretty good at drawing water up, vertically, though the higher they must draw, the less pressure you get at the tap.
Be sure you use a self priming pump if you don't mount it at or below the outlet level on the tank.
Some pumps are not designed to be run dry, and will quickly fail if mounted improperly.

In the average RV with an underfloor tank, 4 feet vertically is about the most the pump would have to raise the water, not enough to fuss over with any decent RV water pump that is designed to raise water 6-12 feet.

Short and sweet, research the pump you want to use, it will tell you how and where to mount it.

Rob