Water and electricity don’t mix well. When you are in a wet basement type situation, you don’t want to worry about running electric cords to a pump. Even when you’re in a dry environment, finding an outlet and running a cord takes time. With Milwaukee’s M18 Cordless Fluid Transfer Pump you just don’t need to think about it anymore.
The Transfer Pump can be used for transferring water, grey water, brown water, or any fluid as long as it’s not flammable, but it can’t handle water with debris in it like waste water (blackwater). Common uses would be emptying a hot water heater before replacing it or emptying a toilet before removing it.
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It’s mainly designed for water transfer. Once the Milwaukee M18 fluid transfer pump is officially announced, there will likely be a list of restrictions as to what you can and can’t use it for. But they said right off the bat that it cannot be used to transfer fuel or other flammable fluids, or water with solids.
See Also: Check out our other Milwaukee 2016 New Product Tool Previews
The pump is self-priming; you just connect the hose and press the button for it to get things going. It can move fluid at a rate of 7.5 gallons per min, and up to 180 gallons when powered by a single 3.0Ah battery.
That comes out to about a pint (16 oz) a second.
The battery compartment is under a lid on the right side of the pump, which can accommodate any M18 battery pack, even the larger High Demand 9.0Ah pack. This keeps the battery pack nice and dry.
The Milwaukee Redlink technology in the pump can detect when it’s pumping dry and shut it off in one minute. This means you can leave the transfer pump to empty out the water heater and go do other things. You don’t have to babysit it to make sure it’s not getting damaged by pumping dry.
The M18 Fluid Transfer Pump is due out in October 2016. According to Milwaukee the Transfer Pump will come with a 5 year warranty. We don’t have any pricing information yet, but Milwaukee says they’ll release details later this summer.
Here’s an intro video of the fluid transfer pump, courtesy of our friends at Tools in Action:
From the video, it seems that some maintenance is recommended – after 100 hours of pumping you should consider replacing the impellers, although it won’t always be the case.
This looks like a convenient tool for quickly emptying out water boilers, which is how it was demoed at Milwaukee’s media event. What else would you use it for?
Yadda says
I can definitely see this for applications in the yard and for plumbing. Neat idea!
Jeff says
And EXACTLY what yard and plumbing applications would these be. I am struggling. Especially where I would need a cordless solution. Help me build a use case!
A corded solution is cheaper, higher transfer rate and would run start to finish with minimal chance of interruption, regardless of fluid tranfer volume, distance, height.
FishStick says
In most cases though that can be said about ANY cordless solution. The few are impact drivers since they never developed a corded solution quite as good as the cordless.
Yard could be rain water barrels but with brown and clear water applications there could be alot. Possibly even emptying small ponds with a filter at the end.
For plumbing though I’m sure there are plenty of uses. Emptying a hot water heater faster than what the drain does with gravity. Clogged large sink or tub that you need to drain first for whatever reason. Flooded areas who knows, I’m not a plumber. But I imagine that dragging a 100ft extension cord under a house and rolling it back up for a 50 gallon or less job would hardly seem worth the hassle. If you use a transfer pump though and don’t want to mess with cords then this would be a solution.
Robert Szachury says
We have changed a few Waterheaters (123 in a month is the record) (26 in one day) the cordless is almost 4 times faster. We drained and timed it. Refilling unit ant doing it again. Not only do we need to not look for a power point its way faster with cordless. Milwaukee for the win!!
fred says
Not a bad idea – does it need flooded suction to work – or did they give you NPSH requirements?
In the business – we had a variety of pumps (electric and engine-driven) – including trash pumps that we’d bring out depending on the job or emergency call. Nothing quite as large as a Fire Department pumper – but I think our big diesel trash pump was good for about 2000 gpm – but as you can imagine it did not use a garden hose. What we had typically on our plumbing trucks was a 10 gpm Pentair electric pump – so this cordless would be in the range.
BTW – we installed lots of electric sump pumps – and once in a while the building owner asked us to install one with a battery backup system – or a backup pump powered by city water pressure
Benjamen says
The demo model was connected to the bottom of a water heater tank. All they told us was that it did not need to be primed by pouring water into it.
This is just speculation, but the impeller must be able to draw a partial vacuum. This makes me think of two more questions, how high can it draw water and what happens as the impeller (or the housing around it) degrades and isn’t as air tight?
John says
Did they mention anything about psi output? Perhaps could be used as a potable camping shower and/or water sprayer. If it’s high enough you could output to a spray head for where you don’t have plumbing.
Benjamen says
The guy told Dan that in the video that you aren’t supposed to restrict the output. So sprayer is probably out, but maybe a non-restrictive shower head would work.
I would also make sure the pump hadn’t ever been used for brown water — I’m not sure how completely you can clean it out.
Dirck says
I intend to use this transfer pump for the not infrequent power outages we experience her on Nantucket. When we anticipate troublesome storms, we stockpile large buckets of water to fill the toilet tank. It would be far easier than lifting heavy buckets or trash cans. They can stay in the tub where they were filled. (Too Much Information, I’m sure!)
Pete says
Why not just fill the tub completely then use a smaller bucket? Just curious.
NCD says
I like that, you did good Milwaukee!
Rob says
Be good if they made an oil transfer pump that fits onto a pale like the drain snake
Nathan says
Looks like you can open the pump up for servicing and replacement of the rotor – is that correct.
might fix the cleaning issue. would be a nifty thing to have camping.
Benjamen says
They mentioned that you might need to replace the rotor after 100 hours or maybe not. They didn’t elaborate much further. I got the impression that they haven’t finalized that information yet. Maybe they haven’t run enough testing to make that recommendation yet.
They do make it sound like the rotor is user serviceable, but they don’t say anything about obtaining replacements either.
Jerry says
From my experience with pumps on the farm, impeller life will depend largely on how clean the water you pump is. Dirt or sand is abrasive and will wear the impeller much faster than clean water.
Paul says
I can’t wait to take it to the local reservoirs to help the kids with bad a$$ sand castles
Bob says
Very loud
JMG says
I was looking for a pump to cycle vinegar/water solution through an on demand water heater, for its annual cleaning cycle. This looks promising, depending on whether or not it will be compatible with the vinegar.
Greg says
This will be the hot gift during the next gas shortage and people take to syphoning other people’s gas tanks
Ron says
Needs an unattended automatic water detection switch so that it could be used in areas that frequently flood.
George says
Interested to see if this would handle salt water. Lots of uses for it if it can handle sea water strength.
KL says
Everyone hauls drinking water here & there’s not always power available. Sometimes gravity feed doesn’t work depending upon weather/conditions/ small off-the-grid homes fed by tanks that get moved around.
We also needed to fill a motor home recently from a water tank in a truck bed, seems like this woulda been perfect.
dave says
Seems like they could’ve made this brushless (assuming that’s why it’s not capable of fuel), so it was capable of fuel.
Chip says
I built an electrical adapter and use a $15 bilge pump with a 25 ft sealed cord and will pump dirty water, off a m12 battery.
John says
What is brown water? I’ve never heard that term and googling doesn’t turn up any results.
glenn says
https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=16+oz+to+ml&meta=cr%3DcountryAU&gws_rd=ssl#q=brown+water&hl=en&tbas=0
Benjamen says
It’s on of the terms the guy from Milwaukee used. I’ve seen it used to mean black water without the solids or water stained brown from rust or sediment. Sometimes it is used to mean black water. In hindsight since it is so ambiguous, it maybe wasn’t the best term to use in the post.
Yeah, it doesn’t show up if you just search for “brown water,” try searching with the terms black water and grey water .
Cliff says
I would assume it’s rated for hot water. Yes ?
Stuart says
Good question! I’ve fired off an email to Milwaukee and will post an update once I hear back.
Stuart says
They said that yes, it can be used to transfer hot water.
MIke says
Bought one last week, and I’ve already used it to drain three water heaters. Some type of reinforced hose is imperative between the pump and the hot water heater. The first two water heaters I used a 3 foot hose with female fittings on either end. This pump created enough vacuum to flatten the hose and restrict volume output. I bought a 2 foot length of 5/8″ reinforced clear poly tube and two barbed female connector adapters. That did the trick. Not sure about longevity, but this thing is making my water heater jobs less of a pain for sure.
Stu says
I have stumbled across this while looking for a battery operated pump for hydraulic and new engine oil. Has anyone used it regular on this . Or can you recommend a power tool that can?
Meyer says
Stu….I am looking for the same. Found these yesterday…will probably give it a shot.
http://www.clarksol.com/html/N2001_U2001Pumps.cfm