"Nonny" wrote in news:aKYLm.11932$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe16.iad:
I think the original intent of Morris Dovey was to make a pump to help people with not enough irrigation water (and no electricity) make a cheap pump to get water up from down somewhere in their soil. Such scarcity of water would preclude your "ram" pump, I think ...
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:41:52 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:
A grand? What volume of pump are we talkin' here, Mo?
I'da (she's been querying me about this, too) thought you'da researched this a wee sight more before putting up a web page on the subject.
Indubitably, my dear Dovey. Does the term "You oughta be in politics" ring any bells?
-- When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. -- Thomas Paine
My crystal ball says somewhere between 2 and 3 HP. Note that if we're driving an alternator, we're not pumping.
The cost of the engine itself will probably be in the $250 ballpark and the trough, polar mount, and tracking system would probably work out somewhere between $400 and $750 depending on design choices.
The 4"/100mm bore PVC pump engine being developed appears to be something that can be user-built for under $100 worth of commonly available materials - and the pumped volume will depend on size of collector and height the water is raised. I'm shooting for somewhere near 1000 gal/hour as a minimal-lift irrigation pump - but note that this isn't really very much water when you consider hydro-electric systems.
If you really have your sights locked onto a micro-pumped-hydro setup, then you'll also have pumping losses raising the water to storage and turbine losses at generation.
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:52:33 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:
Um, my crystal ball says we need to know what volume the pump is so we know what volume of tank to build and what kind of refill time it will take, knowwhatImean,Vern?
OK.
True. That's 16.67 gal/min.
Nah, I was just curious and thought you had researched it in much more detail. I was looking for the Cliff's Notes version, mon.
-- When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. -- Thomas Paine
Then you'll need to wait a bit longer until the first one is running halfway well. There are volunteer teams on five continents working to make that happen.
You can read the closest thing there is to the Cliff's Notes version at
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