Your soap box may have just talked me up to the 3/4. Granted I'll be using
it to water stuff for the most part, but there will be a need to do more
from time to time.

At the very least I'll check elsewhere for a pump than at Lowes.

Oh, and some pressure tanks that use a diaphragm are indeed
pre-pressurized from the factory to specs. They don't have any way however
to re charge the tank and fill the other end with air.


Heh - I understated how much I love my 3/4 pump! When that bad boy kicks in,
it's quieter then then my 1/2 horse pumps (go figure?), and the pressure
ziiipppss right up to cut off. That was the first different, and it was
immediately obvious. The 3/4 zips right up to cutoff, while the 1/2 runs and
runs and runs. The Star pump maintains high volume at higher pressure, so it
fills the tank up much faster. The other pumps loose most of their volume at
higher pressure, which is why it takes them so much longer to fill the tank.

It's a Star Systems 3/4 pump - I looked up the specs online, and it compared
close to the Goulds, and was way ahead of the Flowtec. The Flowtec pumps are
cheap bottom end pieces of junk. Avoid at all costs. Goulds are very good,
and have the highest capacities of all of the ones I looked at. The Star was
a somewhat close second place. IIRC, the Goulds 1/2 horse pumps more then
the Flowtec 3/4 horse. I bought it at Coastal Farm supply. Home Depot and
Lowes here only carry the cheap low end junk pumps.