Solar Water Pump Installation

Last year Reevis Mountain School conducted a fundraiser to purchase equipment for a solar pump, to replace our gasoline-powered creek pump. With the help of many friends and supporters we have completed the project, and our solar pump is now merrily operating - supplying ample irrigation water, with no noise and best of all, no gasoline and no ongoing expense!

To summarize the project, we built a tower and rack for the solar panels (four 175 watt Sharps, provided to us at a low cost by CentroSolar in Scottsdale), and our generous neighbor Brandon dug the hole for the sump. The pump itself was supplied by SunPumps of Safford, AZ. At the end of June, we set the housing in place - a 7-foot length of 36-inch culvert pipe, placed vertically in the sump hole - and surrounded it with large stones, plus a stone masonry wall on the creek side. In July, we dug the trenches for the electric conduit and the water pipe, and at the end of July our kind and brilliant friend Dennis Reed did the electrical work to get the system going. We started pumping around the first of August, and have been amazed to see water pouring into the water tank - it's like magic!

A photo gallery of the installation project is on our website here, and a few videos of the project are on our YouTube channel, reevismountain.