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Commenced:
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01/09/2012 |
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Submitted:
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23/09/2013 |
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Last updated:
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07/10/2015 |
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Location:
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Rochester WA, WA, US |
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Climate zone:
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Cool Temperate |
(projects i'm involved in)
Project: Le Petit Canard Farm
Posted by Laurie Branson almost 10 years ago
Last year we suffered through pumping water from a spring and pond into water totes and a 3000 gallon cistern at the top of our property using a little 12 volt pump. It required lugging a heavy battery up the hill, priming it by pouring a gallon or two of water down the hose, dipping it in the pond, and repeating until it started sucking water.
Even after it was pumping, the flow wasn't huge. We could pump about 375 gallons per fully charged battery up the hill. Then we had to lug the battery back down the hill and charge it on our solar panel - which usually took a day. If only there was a way to do this without power...
To be clear - the incoming flow to our pond is a steady trickle, not a full stream - and it was dried up by August. We are hoping our recent digging effort to increase the pond depth and width will keep it going until the rainy season starts.
Then we discovered the Hydraulic Ram Pump and some really great YouTube videos. This guy explains it in a three part series very well and shows how to assemble it from parts you can get from a plumbing store. Don't waltz into Home Depot and expect to everything you need though. We had to go to a few places to get all of the parts. Although key components needed to be purchased at a professional plumbing store, they generally sell 20 foot lengths of pipe that need to be threaded. Luckily we were able to find threaded 10 footers at Home Depot.
Now for the hard part. We had a to drive a 10 foot glavanized pipe horizontally through 9 feet of packed clay and come out of the inner pond wall in the right spot. We used a T-post driver and a whole lot of muscle. It took several hours.
Once we got the pipe through the pond wall, we assembled the rest of the pump. The compression tube gets fitted with a semi-inflated bicycle tube. This helps keep an air pocket in the compression chamber.
As the pump fills the chamber, it compresses the air and when it reaches the point that it pushes the water uphill, it begins compressing again.
The two swing check valves keep water flowing in the direction we want.
Starting the pump is just a matter of tapping the first check valve open, then monitoring the pressure until it passed 20 psi.
It pumps water uphill through 100 feet of hose into our cistern. The overflow goes into our swale, which eventually recharges the groundwater which is what the spring was doing further down the hill.
We installed a screen on the end of the pipe to avoid sucking up the flora and fauna that have found our little pond.
Now that it is humming along, we don't have to do anything. It just keeps on pumping. Uphill. Without power.
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