Priming the Water Pump

[frank]

Couldn't you get a 6 foot step ladder and attach something to it so that it's about 10 feet tall and use it in place of the missing tree ???

[Offbreed]

Well, if you want to carry the water, you need a "foot valve" for your water line to keep it from running out.

But you might put a "Y" valve on the lake end and get a cheap bilge pump from a boating supply store and that would save a lot of hauling. I have a "Thirsty-Mate" hand pump about 3' long that might work. It came with about 6' of hose and there's places to get extra hose so you can pump from further away.

Looks like it costs about $30 on the net, but I don't think I paid that much for mine.

[default]

If you're on dirt, just dig an 8' deep hole at the cottage, and run an inlet pipe to the lake, and pump from the "well". If you're on rock, put a backflow valve at the lake end, with a hose-bib toward the cottage. Use a hand pump through the hose-bib to fill the pipe. Or replace the impeller pump with a piston-type that will suck air and water both.

Why is it "impossible" to put the pump at the lake-edge?

[NitroJunkie]

First you need a check valve on the bottom of the pickup hose in the lake. Then you should be able to pull the plug at the pump inlet and fill with water until the pickup hose is full. I would plumb in a valve right there at the pump outlet so that you could fill up some 5 gal. buckets once the pump is running and keep them at the pump for future priming. In the fall you would need to open up that check valve and let the water run out of the hose so it doesn't freeze and crack the hose and/or pump.

[spamersarevile]

I need some help on priming a water pump at the cottage. The pump is located about 200 feet from the lake, maybe 6 feet higher in elevation. Due to circumstances, it isn't possible to locate the pump at the lake - I've looked into this - I know pumps are more efficient at pushing water instead of pulling water - in this case, it's just c'est la vie. My father used to prime the pump by pulling the inlet end of the hose out of the lake, putting a ladder up against a tree and tieing the hose to the tree, maybe 10 feet up and then using a watering can to fill up the hose, and when it was full, throwing the inlet back in the lake.

That tree is history this year.

Is it possible to fill up the hose at the pump end? There's a (screw valve?) there (a plug that screws in just before the water line enters the pump). Pore in the water through that valve into the hose and then reclose that valve.

Problem is while there's plenty of water at the lake, there ain't any

200 feet away and that means schlepping maybe 20 watering cans one at a time to the pump and instead of filling up the hose relatively quickly, I'd be doing it gradually, over say 1 hour. Won't some/all of that water simply run back into the lake? I could maybe get a cart and lugg more water at one time, but it'd still take 3 or 4 trips and maybe 20 minutes.

Is there some way of sucking the air out of the water hose. If the inlet is in the lake, wouldn't the water then rise in the hose as the air is vacated?

Every spring it's been a lot of work to get the pump working. It's not the pump itself, just the distance involved and the impossibility of situating the pump at the lakes' edge.

Mike

[TURTLE]

First you need a simple fix to stop all this work in the first place. Install a check valve at the hose that goes into the lake to not let the water back out of the 200 foot line and it will stay primed always. if it will not stay primed, You have a leak in the

200 foot line and find the leak and fix it. $7.00 could save all this work.

TURTLE

[Andy in Fink]

All of the advice I have read so far looks workable. However, if you had to ask the question, I respectfully suggest that you don't really understand how stuff works..... and I mean that in the nicest possible way.......

Contact your brother-in-law. They always give good advice...

Andy in Fink, Texas

[v]

How small a watering can is that? How big a hose? 400 feet round trip x 20 is roughly 1.5 miles. Couldn't you use a bigger container for less trips????

Is there any check valve at the intake end (and how good is it). If not, OF COURSE all the water will flow into the lake. Pour water into the high end of a hose, and why wouldn't it come out thre low end?

Well yeah, that is what I was going to ask. You don't seem to be priming the PUMP so much as filling the hose. Now, some water pumps can't hold a seal unless they are wet, so they have to be primed, typically with about a coffee can full of water. If you actually prime the pump itself, is it capable of sucking the air through??? Have you tried?

-v

[v]

So get a free standing ladder and use it without the tree. (Or would you still not know where to tie the hose to?)

-v.

[v]

"just"?

-v.

[default]

Your point.

Get someone with an ego up there for a week, and get THEM to do it by claiming it can't be done...

[Robert Gaston]

You can get a submersible pump (that's what goes at the bottom of a well). I had one at 200 feet down. It pumped the old H2O at about 15 gal per minute, which was plenty fast.

[Bob]

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A small vacume pump could be hooked to the pump plumbing to suck the air out of the system. Or a sump pump could to used at the lake, either using a battery or extension cord, to fill the hose the old way with no ladder.

Would a shop vac suck hard enough to raise the water?

Bob

[Dean Hoffman]

To add to the vacuum pump suggestion:

Irrigation river/pond pumps had to be primed to start. They usually had a 4" inlet. There was a device that could be added to a non diesel engine that would use the engine's vacuum to prime the pump. I know they were used on Berkeley brand pumps but don't remember much else about them. That might be one option. I had a pump for a drill once that I think was self priming. It fit in the drill chuck and was made to hook to garden hoses.

Dean

[Don Young]

[Larry Caldwell]

Put a foot valve on the suction, or it will ALL run back into the lake. T a ball valve into the line next to the foot valve if you need to drain the line for the winter.

There are self-priming pumps that will suck air until the water gets there. I don't know how long they run, they are designed to self-prime at a very low head, and need water in the pump to do their thing.

When I was a kid, we used to prime an irrigation pump with a hand suction pump. We would just pump like crazy for a few minutes, then kick the pump on when the water got there. It had a 6" suction on it, so we were moving a lot of air. It was a diaphragm pump.

[zxcvbob]

Won't air leaking through the electric pump break the vacuum and keep the pitcher pump from working? (The valve needs to be between the tee and the electric pump, not between the tee and the hand pump.) Otherwise, I like this idea because the pitcher pump can get the water if you need to prime the centrifugal pump.

-Bob

[spamersarevile]

The cottage is on a whole lot of rock - maybe 1 foot of soil in places, if I look really closely. Every spring when the ice breaks up, that part of the lake is exposed to the west - ice piles up and it would damage anything located too closely to the lake shore. It's somebody else's lake shore lot and granting access to their lot is about as far as it goes, plus installing power there would be difficult. Someone else (Thanks!) mentioned a step ladder. If I can get a higher stepladder than what I've got, I might try that, on a non windy day, but it's a bit unlevel at the lakeshore, and it's solid rock.

Mike

[spamersarevile]

Thanks - and also to everyone else that mentioned this!

I'm a klutz with most things mechanical/electrical and I've only observed how my father got the pump going in the spring. Don't think will be able to get the pump going this weekend - looks like some cold weather, but it should be a go next weekend. The ice is now all gone from the lake. Man, is that a pain in the butt (well, cold breeze, at least) using the outhouse at this time of year!

Mike

[v]

There goes that suggestion to "just" dig an 8 foot hole!

The solid rock is GOOD. A ladder on a soft surface is what is bad. You can buy adjustable extension feet that go on either side of a ladder leg, or for once a year you could shim it with boards, eh?

We have the usual 6 foot stepladder, and then we have one that is about 11 foot (so you can stand at the 9 foot level) so you can indeed get what you need, ladderwise.

-v.