Pond pump specifications

Evening all.

As some of you know, I'm building a pond. Its going to have a small waterfall pouring into it, powered by a 12v water pump powered by an old car battery I have.

I'm fine with all the electrical side. I know all the sums I need to do for that, but I don't understand the non-electrical aspects of the specifications, so was hoping someone might be able to help ensure I get the right pump for the job.

Flow rate appears to be in L/h, which I presume is Litres per hour. Is that right?

Also, there is reference to 'lift height' and 'max static head'. I'm going to hazard a guess that these are the same thing, and that it is the max height that the pump can push water up to, assuming a vertical pipe at the same bore as the outlet. Would that be anywhere near correct?

The pump I'm looking at says it does 550L/h. That is enough for my small waterfall (which would really be hardly more than a trickle), but if the waterfall outlet is 2ft higher than the surface of the water, would I still get close to 550 litres per hour? Much less and it really would be a trickle. The next one up is 2000 litres per hour, which I think would be quite a lot more than I need.

This is the one I've got my eye on for now.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-12V-55...Water-Pump-Koi-Fish-Pond-Garden-/370798177084

 

To get a decent flow on a waterfall you should aim for 250 Litres per hour per 25mm width of waterfall.
Pump flow rate is usually quoted with nothing restricting it.
The flow rate will drop dramatically as soon as it has to pump above surface of water.
I don't think the pump you are looking at will produce anything at 2ft above the water level.

 

Hopefully the pump spec will have a graph showing Litres-per-Hour at various lift heights (if not then either the website can't be bothered to publish them, or they don't exist - which would worry me). If you can find a graph for the pump you are interested in that will tell you whether its going to be any good at 2' lift.

I'm a bit sceptical that you will achieve that with a 12v car battery, but maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Hopefully you can

Fit the widest diameter bore hose to the pump that you can, that will reduce friction and increase flow rate.

 

I've dismissed that pump I was looking at, as a bit of further research and some calculations reveal it to be incapable of living up to what I want.

Several other priorities now stand before building the waterfall, so its postponed for the time being. I have to make the area kiddy safe yet, so secure fences have to be built. Also there are sections of the garden (gradually diminishing) that are still an absolute tip. The pond project will have to step down a notch. Its not written off, I'm still going to continue planting it up and trying to help steer it towards achieving 'balance' (I've been reading about good bacteria vs bad bacteria and algae and good bugs and bad bugs etc). Just I'm not going to start off any new potentially expensive and/or time consuming projects for a while.