Davey BT Series Booster Pump

The BT is a robust centrifugal pump fitted with Davey’s Torrium2 water pressure controller, sold as one assembly. Torrium2 reads pressure and flow together rather than pressure alone, so the pump runs while water is being drawn and stops when it is not — which is why the BT holds a seemingly constant pressure where a pressure-switch system hunts between cut-in and cut-out.

Davey specifies it for homes where the incoming municipal supply is inadequate, for underground or surface water supplies, automatic water transfer, installations where the supply may be interrupted, and domestic and light industrial irrigation. All-stainless construction handles water to 176°F.

Installation is plug-in: a 6 ft power cord with a standard NEMA plug — 5-15P on the 120V models, 6-15P on the 240V — and a discharge outlet that rotates a full 360° so the outlet plumbing can run vertically or at a right angle. The coupling wrench is in the box.

The BT is supplied as a single pump with its controller. Davey does not publish a paired or duty/standby configuration for this series.

Where a building needs a second pump for backup or for more flow, the drive-controlled models do it. The EvoDrive pairs two units in duty/standby or parallel from a single connection cable, and the DynaDrive daisy-chains two pumps in parallel. Choose one of those at purchase if the installation may need redundancy.

Constant flow operation — Torrium2 senses pressure and flow together. It starts on a pressure drop and stops when flow falls below 0.26 gpm, which is what removes the cycling a pressure switch gives you in the shower.

Adaptive cut-in pressure — Cut-in is set to 80 percent of the last shut-off head, every stop. The controller follows seasonal supply variation and changing demand without anyone adjusting it.

Low head loss — Large internal water pathways mean Torrium2 costs less head than comparable pressure controllers, so more of what the pump makes reaches the fixture.

Adjustable setting range — Settable from 15 psi to 80 psi.

No pressure tank required — The controller replaces the pressure switch and tank in a conventional booster installation.

The figures below are the pressure this pump adds. That is what a pump curve measures — the impeller does not know what pressure is already on its inlet.

BT14-30 — 14 gpm at 30 psi nominal, 40 psi maximum boost

BT14-45 — 14 gpm at 45 psi nominal, 60 psi maximum boost

BT20-30 — 20 gpm at 30 psi nominal, 50 psi maximum boost

BT20-40 — 20 gpm at 40 psi nominal, 80 psi maximum boost

BT30-30 — 30 gpm at 30 psi nominal, 50 psi maximum boost

Drawing from a tank, cistern or well — nothing arrives with pressure, so what the pump adds is what you get. Read the table straight through: a BT30-30 delivers about 30 gpm at 30 psi.

Fed by a city main — the pump adds on top of what already arrives, and Davey publishes a maximum inlet pressure per model because incoming plus boost has to stay under the 100 psi system limit. The BT20-40 makes the most boost at 80 psi and therefore accepts the least inlet, 20 psi; the BT14-30 accepts 60 psi inlet and adds 40. Incoming pressure buys you more flow, not more pressure.

Best operating range: 10 to 18 gpm on the 14 gpm models, 15 to 25 gpm on the 20 gpm models and 22 to 38 gpm on the BT30-30. This is where the pump turns the most electricity into water pressure. Ask for more flow than it can deliver at your setting and it runs at full speed continuously, which is where motors and seals wear out. Sizing a booster to the building rather than to the headline numbers is what makes it last.

Zero flow is the shut-off point — a ceiling, not a working point. Davey publishes the family capacity as 45 gpm and maximum total head as 76 psi; the per-model maximum boost figures in the table above are from Davey’s own performance table and govern selection. Curves read from the published plot in the Davey BT Series datasheet DWP0116-4/0323; best operating range is derived from those points, as Davey publishes no efficiency curve for this series.

130°F ambient rating — Higher than the usual motor rating, which Davey publishes as giving longer life and better tolerance to voltage variation. That margin is the one that matters in a Houston plant room.

TEFC, corrosion-resistant — Totally enclosed fan-cooled motor built from corrosion-resistant materials, with a marine-grade aluminium shell and endshield.

IP55 — Rated against dust ingress and low-pressure water jets.

Auto-resetting thermal overload — Built-in protection against both high operating temperature and high current draw, resetting itself rather than needing a trip out to the site.

Designed for frequent starts — Motor and pump are specified for frequent starting, which is what a demand-led booster actually does all day.

Fail-safe capacitor — Permanently split P2 capacitor design.

B is the stainless steel booster series, T means Torrium2 equipped, and the two numbers are flow at nominal pressure. BT14-30 is 14 gpm at 30 psi; BT20-40 is 20 gpm at 40 psi.

This system has no app or remote connectivity. It runs from the Torrium2 controller and needs no network connection.