Hand pumps for allotment

[Andy Dingley]

Hydraulic rams aren't a means of pumping water, they're an excuse to spend all day pratting around with hydraulic rams! 8-)

I'd build more hydraulic rams for low-volume high-lift. but I wouldn't bother for 6' lift over a berm.

One of the problems with hydraulic rams (and their virtue) is that they run 24x7. This means that you have to build them pretty well, or else they _will_ break or wear out. You can cut corners on an intermittent-use pump that you can drain down over the winter that you just can't get away with for a ram.

Rams also need a little fall to work from, whereas a pump can pump from a static pond. Unless your fall is steep, or your river frontage is long, it can be difficult to find two points far enough apart vertically. This is also likely to mean a long intake pipe, which means scope for blockages.

cylinder (i.e. shorter) on there, even if you have to call in favours to get the welding done (or just see it as one of the few times a cheap stick welder is domestically useful).

[Peter Parry]

As this is diy - an Emas

Pump Canzee pump.

[Andrew Mawson]

Fuel transfer pump designed to fill JCB tank from 45 gallon drum. Pump is at bottom of pipe so pushing not sucking and self primes.

[Dave Osborne]

What, kind of like a ducking stool? ;-)

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye, counter balanced so you have to work to get the empty bucket down to the water rather than lifting it when full (ie heavy). I suspect it might be best if the bucket was permenant to the arm. IIRC the ones used in places forgien have holes in so they fill and sink quickly but not holes so big that it's empty by the time you've hoiked it out and poured the contents. That's partly another reason for a "big funnel" and a row of butts to fill. I wonder if a weight on the bucket rim to make it unstable would work to get it to tip and fill?

[Dave Liquorice]

Or "trash filter". I think you could make something with a catering sized bean tin and a hammer and nail, if it only lasts a year catering sized bean cans are easy to find... Attaching the lift pipe might be more interesting, might be worth making that of something more durable, plastic or stainless steel.

[Dave Liquorice]

I think with proper wells with hand pumps the pump is down the bottom of the well with a meachnical linkage to the handle at the top. My thinking is that the lift pipe will never stay full of water and trying to lift a 2m column of water with air just ain't going to work particulary well.

Put the pump at the bottom just above or even below the water level it doesn't matter if the pipe drains you just refill it with a few pumps of the handle.

[Dave Liquorice]

Like the well pump in another post put it at the water level so it's pushing the water not lifting it.

I think you'll find you'll need a large (read expensive) solar panel, a pikey target... oh and the battery would be target as well.

Another thought battery drill and a drill pump?

[JimK]

maybe - but my imagining of the OP scenario is the 2m figure is the height of the flood control berm between allotments and stream - i.e. I'm assuming the allotments and stream are at very similar levels (hence the need for siting flood defences) - so I imagine the pipe would be "_n_" shaped.. rather than a 2m vertical.

If the pipe had a valve just before the pump then I can't see how it could empty itself overnight say ..

Could it anyway due to the siphon effect of the "_n_" shape?

Cheers JimK

[Owain]

Is there a fire hydrant anywhere near there. Because 400 yds of garden hose shouldn't cost that much, or you could use a tank on a barrow.

Does the meadow the other side have any water supply - might be easier to throw a hose over the stream

Do you need bulk supplies of water, or could you use trickle irrigation, in which case you might not need a battery at all, just a solar pump.

Owain

[Andy Dingley]

The tyre treadle pump is described in this book "How to Make and Use the Treadle Irrigation Pump"

(Out of stock at Amazon though)

Another idea is the "rope & washer" pump, which uses rubber disks from old tyres, pulled upwards through a pipe.

ideas at

[David WE Roberts]

Alternative strategy - build a decent set of steps from scrap wood with a platform at water level to stand on. Much like a landing stage. This solves the problem of unsafe scrambling. Could be temporary - a six foot flight of steps shouldn't be that heavy.

If you have pikey problems then the solar pump is a non-starter. Far too tempting. Also, caravan pumps and the like have a very low throughput and are designed to handle clean water. Also designed for occasional use.

It might be worth looking at large storage tanks (as used by farms etc.) to hold a lot of water. You could then hire (or even borrow) a petrol driven pump for a day and fill up your storage area. The aim would be to have enough water to last a month or so. This assumes you have the spare space for the storage!

Whatever, the simplest strategy seems to be to buy a second hand 2/4 stroke water pump then sort out storage. Or to be more flexible, buy a petrol generator and an electric pump. Then you can use the generator for pumping and also for running power tools.

Or build a 1 metre wier to give you enough head to drive a hydraulic ram :-)

Cheers

Dave R

[JimK]

thinking on ... if levels of stream and allotments similar - could you, on the allotment side, dig a hole deep enough so that it would either fill by itself (like digging on the beach) or use a normal (powerless) syphon to fill it up? if it's possible you could bury

1000litre IBCs or two (=A340 odd quid usually - tho watch what was in them) and use buckets (at least) to get it out again as necessary??

Cheers JimK

[Chris J Dixon]

I do believe you have invented the shadoof.

knew that trying to draw one in geography would come in useful eventually ;-)

Chris

[Tim Watts]

Yes, I do feel 4000 years old after moving 2 tons of aggregate yesterday!

[General reply]

Thanks for all the comments folks. The solar panel re: pikey is a good point. another good point is throwing the pump into the water - I don;t think the EA mind as long as it doesn't act as a method of fouling the flow.

Another good point re trickle feeding a tank or multiple cascaded butts

- could use a cheap small panel and a pond fountain pump (after all they are designed to pump crap) and trickle feed a tank. That way the scope of the losses are smaller if the pikies have a visit (though it isn't visible from the road so we might get away with it.)

[Onetap]

Foot valve and strainer; the foot valve is a non-return valve, to stop the water you've raised running back when you stop pumping. They usually have a strainer attached. Don't forget any suction 'hose' must be reinforced or sufficiently rigid to prevent it being sucked flat.

Depending on how stonery the soil is, it may be practical to drill a hole; the water table will be around the level of the stream, maybe a bit higher. You can get hand augers for sampling cores or look on the web for hammer point wells. Mostly US websites, where rural water supply depends on drilling wells. It would avoid raising water over the berm and the water would be filtered by the subsoil. Watercourses shifted around in ancient times so there will be a saturated permeable subsoil. The stream water will contain whatever has been dumped upstream. You'd need to fabricate a well-casing. Jet pump at ground level; most submersible borehole pumps start at 6" diameter. Or look into making a hand pump from plastic pipe.

In the short term I'd go with the stream and try to find a lawnmower engine you could attach to a commercial belt-drive pump. E-bay or try the local scrappy for the latter.

[Theo Markettos]

how to make a pump from an old car differential

These basic two-strokes:

used on the Nile. Made in India, utterly bombproof, and run for ever on a can of petrol

I'm not sure where you'd source one in the UK. Though the fenland farmers must have similar requirements.

Theo

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Tim Watts formulated :

No electricity, but what about a 12v battery?

A 12v pump as used in caravans would serve your purpose. They are designed to be dropped down inside the water barrel and can easily pump up to a 9 foot head. Your filter, could be as simple as the base of a small plastic barrel (or bucket) buried in the stream bed with lots of small holes to filter the courser stuff out.

You could take the battery home to recharge, or charge it via a solar cell, or even small wind generator.

[Tim Watts]

Hey - a use for B&Q wind generators after all!

[Tim Lamb]

I have just this set up to top up my pond. The well casing is galvanised expanded metal sheet. The river is about 20m away and the well just about keeps up with a mains sump pump (about 10 gallons per minute).

regards