Is there a bicycle powered water pump available? A simple way to keep the basement dry when the power goes off, if so.
I can't find any. It ought to be simple though.
A regular bike rider can easily put out 250w for hours, which ought to keep ahead of a flood with lots of room for breaks.
Got to be real fun doing that all night. ;-)
It also means you must be home at the time.
Consider the horsepower it takes to lift a given volume of water a given height in a given time. A man isn't good for much, bicycle or no. This was well known to the 19th century navies of the world wrt bilge pumps and to firefighting before the era of portable steam engines.
Reminds me of a friend who thought we would fly on bicycles some day, it was just a matter of improving the mechanical efficiency. That he couldn't run up a few flights of stairs without being exhausted didn't seem to be a problem.
Likewise those who think the country can be run by sunbeams. There's only
700 watts/sq meter of sunlight falling on the surface of the earth. At the equator. At noon. With no clouds. The ONLY way to increase that number is to move the orbit of the earth closer to the sun.
Build your own:
1 pump 1 bicycle 1 belt 2 pulleys250 watts = 1/3 horsepower. Maybe it would work.
Or you could employ a really BIG lens or mirror.
Jeff
I think you are joking. This is just too funny........ Of course, if you are serious, why the bike? Just lay on your back in the water and blow real hard thru the pipe. this forcing the water up the pipe. Be sure to stop to breath.....
On a more practical note, have you ever heard of a gas powered generator? They also make battery powered sump pumps that use a 12 volt car or marine battery.
just suck it through a straw and spit it out the door.
randy
It's more fruitful than bike riding, and people do that for hours; going for 100 mile rides both Saturday and Sunday, for instnace.
Look at the motivation when the water's gaining on you.
Some people are home most of the time, and there's a fine water alarm in the sump hole.
The thing about human powered is that it outlasts the power outage easily, and gives you something to do in the dark. No fumes, no stale gasoline running out, no dead batteries.
It's not as if you'd have to do it continuously, just when the alarm tells you the water has risen again; then pump it dry again. There's lots of water storage under the floor before the well is full again.
What's your definition of a "regular" bike rider? I'm thinking that a regular bike rider would mostly likey give up in the first 15 minutes. A strong rider might be able to do it.
Say you commute by bike every day. It takes some practice but is not unusual given that you do.
Like you are going to want to ride that bike everytime the alarm goes off, at 3 am. Look into watermain powered pumps , Basepump,or Zoeller.
Easily? During the Tour de France, a commentator remarked that Lance Armstrong could produce 400 watts. He didn't say for how long, but it left me with the impression that 400 was very impressive. Keep in mind I don't even own a bicycle.
As a side note; Armstrong made me proud to be an American. Not just for his cycling skill but his self control. The first time one of those oh-so-civil Frenchies spit on me, I would have had to stop and punch some manners into him.
I heard 600. There's some variation in what the right figure is, and what normal bike rider is, but it's up high enough to move volumes of water comparable to a sump pump.
The trick is pacing, incidentally; running always _just_ below what would wear you out, rather than randomly above and way below, which is what a novice does, and burns himself out on. Which is where regular practice comes in more than muscle.
There are a lot of square meters on a roof top. The problem is conversion efficiency and the cost of the equipment. Energy would have to be stored for night and cloudy days (batteries). John
10 sq meters of a mirror or 10 sq meters of photovolactic cells. Same area.
If you do all the computations, you'll find that a solar collector farm the size of the Los Angeles basin (1200 sq miles) would be sufficient to power California. All the people remaining in Los Angeles would, unfortunately, be in the dark.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
You missed my point...A lens or curved mirror in space which was a few times larger in diameter than the earth would be ANOTHER way to "increase that number".....
It was a joke, son....ergo the I added.
Jeff
[snip]
There *have* been a few flights of such aircraft already, you know.
Not as far-fetched as it might seem, actually.
Electricity consumption in the United States is on the order of 4 trillion KwH annually. There are somewhat over 4000 hours of daylight in a year (12 hr/day avg. * 365 days), so supplying this demand would require the generation of roughly one billion Kw per hour of daylight.
Now suppose that 100 watts/sq meter of the incident sunlight could actually be converted to electricity, on a year-round average. A big supposition, perhaps, but bear with me.
To generate one billion Kw (one trillion watts) at 100 watts/sq meter requires a collector array with an area of 10 billion square meters.
That's actually not as big as it sounds like at first, just square 100 Km on a side.
Furthermore...
The total land area of the United States is approximately 9 *trillion* square meters; thus, a collector array comprising only about one tenth of one percent of the nation's land area could be sufficient to supply all of its electricity needs.
Lean athletes in an agony of exertion pedaled around a track in a fragile contraption. I suppose you too believe this will be perfected into a flying bicycle for grandma someday?
it will..as soon as granny lives on the moon, or MAYBE mars.
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