Discharge Pipe—Make the discharge piping as straight as possible, using long bends.
Packing—The stuffing boxes should be carefully packed and the gland brought up firmly against the packing; screwing up the gland by hand should be sufficient.
Large sizes of suction and discharge pipe are desirable, because the friction of the water in the pipes thus reduced makes the pump work easier.
POWER PUMPS
POWER DRIVEN PUMPS.
By a power-driven pump is meant one actuated by Belt, Rope-transmission, Gear, Shafting, Electric-motor, Water-wheel, Friction, or by direct connection to a power shaft. It thus becomes very frequently a question which apparatus is most desirable.
These are classified, thus—
1. Single power pumps,
2. Duplex power pumps,
3. Triplex (triple) power pumps,
4. Quadruplex, etc. Where the sizes still further increase they are named from the number of barrels or water cylinders, but when of much larger size than the Triplex they come under the classification of pumping engines.
Where power can be had from a shaft in motion there is no pump so economical as the power or belt driven pump. This fact is shown by the rapid increase in the number of applications of this type of pump: the reduced cost of manufacture in making the teeth of the gear wheels, the use of automatic machinery, the production of interchangeable parts have tended to produce a high grade of machine at an attractive price.
The energy expended in operating the power driven pump is obtained at the same economy as that required by the machinery in the mill or factory, and as a modern automatic cutoff engine will develop a horse power with considerable less steam than the direct acting steam pump the cost of the power required by the power driven pump is correspondingly less; it participates in the economy of the steam engine using from one and a half pounds of coal to five or six pounds per H. P. per hour.