Milwaukee Transfer Pump: What Is It Used For & How Long Can It Run On One Charge?
The Milwaukee hardware brand produces a variety of different tools and products, some with obvious uses, others a little stranger or more specialized. Every tool has its purpose, of course, and you might just find that purpose to be particularly useful if you engage in certain kinds of handiwork.
Take, for example, the Milwaukee M18 Transfer Pump, a similar product to the Milwaukee Stick Pump. It's not immediately clear what this thing is even for at a casual glance; it kind of looks like a flashlight with a couple of hoses on the side. The point of those hoses is to facilitate the quick and easy transfer or movement of clean water, usually from some manner of installation or appliance like a water heater or air conditioner. Of course, not every water heater or air conditioner is the same size, which means they all hold variable amounts of liquid. The Milwaukee Transfer Pump, on paper, can handle water movement jobs up to 240 gallons on a single 5.0Ah battery charge. According to Milwaukee users on platforms like Reddit, though, your actual battery mileage may vary a bit depending on the conditions you pump in.
The pump is intended for quickly moving clean water
The primary purpose of the Milwaukee Transfer Pump is to aid in water-related service work, such as cycling water out of a water heater or air conditioner or removing water from a backed-up toilet or sink. The pump has a self-priming feature, activating automatically once you've fastened hoses into both of its ports. Whether you're pumping water out completely or replacing it with different water, the Transfer Pump can facilitate both.
According to its product page on Home Depot's website, this Transfer Pump has a water flow rate of 8 GPM, along with 18 feet of lift and 75 feet of head height. Basically, even if the water source is lower than where the pump is placed, it can pull water up and out a good distance above itself, which is necessary if you're trying to pump it into a container that's not perfectly leveled, for example. The pump has a flow detector built in, which automatically shuts it off once the water stops flowing.
Milwaukee stresses in diagrams for this tool that it's only intended to be used with clean water. The brand advises against using it to move flammable liquids like fuel, abrasive liquids like saltwater or laundry discharge, or any water with particulates like sand or debris in it.
The pump is rated for 240 gallons on a single charge
Water-related jobs, whether it's cycling a water heater or cleaning up a flooded basement, can take on a lot of different forms with different volumes of water. Obviously, it'd be to your benefit if you could handle an entire job without needing to fiddle with battery packs on the pump. The question is, can the pump last long enough?
According to the product page, it can move up to 240 gallons of water on a single full charge when equipped with a Milwaukee M18 Redlithium XC5.0 battery pack. That's a middle-of-the-road battery pack, and based on a diagram on the store page, that's enough juice to fully empty a little less than 5 water heaters. This diagram also states that a smaller Redlithium XC3.0 battery could empty a little less than 3 water heaters, while a larger Redlithium High Output HD12.0 battery could empty about 12 and a half water heaters.
According to users of this pump on Reddit, the actual operating time you get out of the pump and its battery pack will vary a bit depending on the conditions you're pumping in. One user said that pumping a 55-gallon drum with a 9.0Ah battery pack drained it down to a single bar, though they conceded that the drum was positioned 30 feet away and at a lower elevation. Other users have added that, so long as there isn't substantial head pressure to overcome, the pump can move well over 100 gallons and still have plenty of energy left with a 5.0Ah battery.