3” and 2” Submersible Support Page

Your pump will arrive with 6’ of cable attached. You’ll need to extend this according to your water level and installation design by splicing on a custom length of additional pump wire. To do this, use 3-strand submersible wire of at least 12 gauge. The distance between the pump and the controller will dictate the wire gauge required. In general, a larger wire diameter will ensure maximum performance:

Up to 200’ between the pump and controller, use 12-gauge, 3-strand wire.
For distances greater than 200’, optional use of 10-gauge, 3-strand wire but 12-3 is most common. 

The low water and tank full sensor each have 100′ of wire attached to the probe but you can use the included splice kit for extending your sensor wire if necessary with 16-22 gauge 2-strand wire (available in the Communications/ Home Security section of your local hardware store) following the same steps outline below. The two sensors in your kit are identical so either one can be used for the low water sensor.

RPS also carries additional pump wire and sensor wire, give us a call to order.

Use the provided splice kit with adhesive-lined heat-shrink tubing to connect your pump cable extension. Your pump comes with butt crimps pre-attached for ease of connection; we also provide 3 larger diameter butt crimps in your kit for splicing 10 gauge wire if needed. If you don’t have a heat gun to shrink the tubing, you can use a butane lighter, but make sure not to melt the insulation or set it on re. You can also use a lighter, but be extremely careful not to overheat and melt the heat-shrinks.

Face panels due south for maximum performance, regardless of season and type of mount. During winter adjust for a steeper panel angle and a flatter summer angle. This increases efficiency the efficiency of panels which, in turn, allows you to achieve more pumping hours per day.  To determine what tilt angle to use for your mount, visit www.rpssolarpumps.com/tilt

Before connecting the solar panel array to the RPS controller, we encourage you to check that each panel is performing properly. This check is done at our warehouse on every panel before sending out to customers, but shipping or environmental damage may have occurred since then.

Our co-owner Mike will walk you through how to test each panel individually….

A typical single 100W panel should fall within the following readings…. 

Vmp: 16V – 20V

Voc: 20V – 23V

Isc: 5-6.5A

These values will be different when panels are connected together in series or series parallel. Below are the values you should receive when panels are connected correctly and operating normally.