irrigation pump

[littleminnie]

The people I rent land from have confronted me with some issues about the irrigation pump' energy use. There is a family that rents the house there, a small business in and out of the barn and me using the irrigation pump all on the same meter. I was told years ago that the pump used very little power and assumed my rent went to that bill somewhat. Now I find out it wasn't and the family renting the house now pays the whole energy bill for the house, barn and pump. I need to pay them for my use but without an individual meter how will they know how much I am costing? I plan to do a few things: call the electric companies to get an estimate on kwh used on pumps, watch the meter when I have the pump on and have the owners look up last year's bills when no one was living in the house.
If you have an idea of how much power is used to let me know. I don't know the details of what kind of pump we are talking about. It seems like the kind in fields but might be smaller. I have to plug it in with this big cord in spring and then flip the elctric switch to on and then the pump starts pumping to the spigots. The water outlet is pretty big and has two pipes and two regular spigots and a lot of pressure.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

In addition to the methods you suggested:
The pump probably has a label on it detailing how
much electricity it uses under full load.
Multiply that by the hours of use in a month
to arrive at an estimate of electrical usage.
(Your pump might not be working under full power.)

If the pump uses a standard 110V plug, there is a device
called "kill-a-watt" that will measure the electrical usage.

You could also measure the Amps using a clamp on ammeter,
and do math to convert to KWH.

I'd probably read the meter for a day without the pumps on and then for a day with them on and take the difference.

[bertiefox]

When we moved to France I bought a nice new water pump for irrigation, nothing spectacular, just reasonably powerful to drive a flow through a typical hosepipe. After using it for a week or two I couldn't believe how much electricity we seemed to have used for a summer month, and then I realised the pump was rated at 1.8kw! So running the pump for ten hours or so to drive a sprinkler around the vegetable plot was like burning a powerful electric fire in the middle of winter!

[littleminnie]

Thanks, I will look for a label. I am sure the guys I rent from know about what it uses, but they seem to be afraid of their sister. She hasn't contacted me yet. Depending on what vibe I get, I might start looking for new land to rent by fall. It is hard to find it close though!