Last month, I discussed why a pump should be aligned nine times and declared that four of those alignment adjustments should be made before the pump is started up.
I received good feedback from the readers on my January 2019 P&S article “Calculating vs. Estimating Pipe Velocity.” Below are some of the letters and my responses.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail”… paraphrased from Dr. Abraham Maslow (“Psychology of Science,” 1966). This famous axiom is also referred to as the law of the instrument.
During our last Pump School session, one attendee asked how much error there would be if the velocity head and gauge elevation correction were not accounted for.
When it comes to pumping systems that have varying demands, many engineers are hesitant to size the pump to less than the highest possible load. While this is certainly conservative from a flow standpoint, the downside is that additional costs are incurred to mitigate what might be a small risk.