how to protect a pump and radiator

This subforum may not be the best place for this questions, but it is at least related.

I am building some large, flat, open tanks for water in my greenhouse for a heating/cooling system: see more details here:  https://permies.com/t/108087/car-radiator-heating-greenhouse-sizing

I have a non-submersible pump which will be pulling the water out and running it through a radiator before going back into the tanks.

The water will not be super dirty, but I would like to grow a few water lilies in pots and keep a few fish to eat mosquitoes. And the tanks will be open, with plants in pots set on plants above them to save space. So some gunk will end up in the water. I need to protect my pump and more importantly the radiator.

If I drilled a bunch of one inch holes in a five gallon bucket, wrapped it tightly in landscape fabric, and put the pump intake inside of it, would that do a fairly good job of keeping unwanted objects out? How fast would it clog up? Any better ideas?

Hi Greg,

Oddly enough as I was sitting here having lunch in Denver (work trip) I saw your post.  

Your idea should work but if you also got a standard cartridge water filter to put between your "pre-filter" and the pump it would ensure that the pump would have clean water entering into it.  Your bucket with landscape cloth should catch the big stuff, and I believe that your filter element would last a very long time before clogging.  You could also use a Rusco spin-down water filter which you can get as small as 500 mesh.  The beauty of the Rusco is that you do not have a cartridge that needs to be replaced but rather it can be washed, however... in your application you would have to use valves and plumb in a system to wash the filter down from tap water.  Normally this can happen with no extra plumbing but here the pump mucks up that possibility.

I hope everything goes well with your project.

Sincerely,

Ralph