Timbo

It’s a 750W pump. When you say length of cable are you asking from the DB board or from the plug? it’s wired into the garage plug circuit which is quite far from the db board, maybe 40m of cable. 2.5mm all the way. I have a c curve breaker on that circuit. I tried to research soft starters, but it’s hard to find local info and what I did see on the forum is opinions that they are pricey (might be similar to a vsd pump if you combine the cost of the centrifuge pump and starter). Interested in the capacitor idea, what would that involve?

yes, the pump can cause a voltage drop (due to the high draw nature of the inductive load). When the voltage drops you see the light flicker, especially with LED bulbs. incandescent bulbs were less susceptible to voltage drops because of the heat they generate. (im sure chatgpt can explain the science better than i can). I even see it with my new bulbs when the grid voltage is below 220, and the pump kicks in. like right now its 215 ish which means everything is abit sensitive atm: If you want to avoid this buy a variable speed or HMS pump, Its a lesson i learnt. Spent tons of time researching and never considered the impact the pump would have on my house electricity. i hindsight i should have gotten a Variable speed pump instead. Another lesson was that the normal Centrifuge pumps are all cast iron inside, so for the first few months you will see rust in the water that comes from the tank, especially after the pump has been standing a while (like overnight for example). This goes away after some time as after a couple months of it being a "closed circuit" there isnt really any oxygen in there to oxidise the iron and cause rust.

I wanted to close the loop on this post for anyone else that stumbles upon my bad luck. I found that Osram/Ledvance dimmable LED GU10 bulbs (glass) ones are not impacted by the water pump. I tried a couple brands, interestingly an old set of Synerji dimmable bulbs are also not impacted however a new set I bought is. So the components must of changed. im still looking for a replacement filament type bulb, tried LEDworx from builders and no luck. I see osram/Ledvance have a 7w version. Gonna order a pair of them and hopefully will get lucky.

Pressure Reducing Valve, so your geyser doesnt go boom

I had a similar idea, I have a tap by the gate, and then my PRV at the house. I installed the tank before the PRV at the house and put the non return valve after the feed from that tap by the gate. So that tap is always off municipality. which is never used for watering grass in the rainy season of Durban 😆 anyway, I was bothered by the lights when sitting in bed with those LED filament lights on (seemed like a great idea at the time) trying to give me a migraine (or start a party depending on how you look at it) when someone flushes the toilet 😅

This is a really good plan, I think changing the LEDs is probably the most appropriate short term quality of life improvement. I noticed my dimmable LEDs aren’t affected by this so might start with that in one room and see how it goes.

Thanks for your input, really appreciate it. I also noticed this, my dimmable downlights arent impacted. Ive got some of those big LED filament bulbs that are impacted the most. I will see if the are replaceable with something more tolerable. Also the pressure tank is on my list, as the pump runs really frequently at the moment and would like to reduce the wear on it.

Thank you, this is good feedback. I will go see if my local electrical shop can advise on alternative brand LEDs. as a start.

Thanks for this, i have a Shelly PM Mini wired into it, but i dont think its capturing the spike because its too quick. will get my Fluke on there and see what the current spike is.

Thanks for the feedback, I do notice it with my Aircons too. But it doesn’t seem as extreme, also the pump kicks in quite frequently when there is a running water so the light flickering can be quite obvious. Starting to think not spending the extra cash on a VSD was a bad idea. However I did a lot of research and i did not ever read about this problem (even though the reason for it make sense) without replacing my brand new pump, are there any other options? I did read about soft starters, but they also don’t seem to be a cheap fix (not looking for one, but comparing the cost of that vs a new pump, makes more sense to go with pump)

Hi There, I recently installed a biomek 0.75kw centrifuge pump from a jojo tank to feed the water mains on my house. I’ve been experiencing this issue with the LED lights in my house flickering when the pump starts. Its on a plug circuit for the garage with a 20A breaker. I have a LuxPower SNA5000 powering this circuit (and others). The issue happens when there is grid and when it’s on EPS. From what I read this can be because the pump is causing the voltage to drop and the LED lights are sensitive to voltage changes. How do I diagnose this? Do I measure the voltage at the pump when it starts to see if this is the case? I like to understand what is going on when I have electrical or plumbing issues which is why I would like to try and diagnose as much as I can before getting an electrician out, that way I will learn more thanks in advance

Thanks Guys! your input is amazing! Any recommended suppliers to purchase it from? i see its available on most of the Solar E commerce sites.

Thanks this is what i was hoping for, plan to buy the Victron cable so that it can be used with future Solar setup so should be all good. Ive been researching ways of monitoring my consumption and pulling the data into HA for weeks now and this is by far the cleanest (and safest) way ive seen sofar! price tag too is pretty reasonable because its available locally! really appreciate your input!

Wow! thanks for the detailed response, im a tinkerer too and have a Raspberry Pi3 already sitting gathering dust! I think im going to try this out, and then when im ready to start buying kit i can look at the Venus GX / Color GX. Out of interest, what HAT did you need for the Pi and how much fiddling did you have to do to get it to work with the Raspberry Pi VenusOS image?

Awesome Setup!! had a couple questions about your GridTie & ET112. The Sonoff in your meter box has me intrigued, i would almost say its attached to the GridTie meter, but the cable might just be similar? what are you using the sonoff for and what is running on it? Tasmota? Regarding the ET112, im wanting to do some monitoring of my consumption for a few months to get an idea of what my needs will be when i do a solar setup. The HA addict in me wants to capture this in HA rather than take meter readings every day for the next few months. Do you think it would be viable to get one of these and the Color GX setup and start capturing the modbus data without the rest of the inverter & Solar setup? ive pretty much already got my heart set on Victron so it would get me one step towards the full setup and satisfy my HA urges! lol I also saw that you can install VenusOS on a Raspberry pi, would you think this would be a viable option too? than spending 10k just to get energy readings in HA Lastly how are you measuring your Geyser consumption separately from the rest of the house? pretty stuck on this Power usage monitoring gravy train right now and would live to get this into my HA setup!