Water head, pressure, pipe diameter

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If there's enough flow from the spring, a hydraulic ram will be all the pump you need, and it needs no electricity or gasoline. At a friends place, the spring was on the wrong side of a hill. A hydraulic ram discharges about half the water down the hill to a "runneth over" cattle trough, and pumped water up over the top and down the other side to the house. If you're out in the middle of not much and hear a regular "fsshH whoomph; fsshH whoomph; fsshH whoomph" that's probably a hydraulic ram. It's nice to have it on the _other_ side of a hill! A do-it-yourself version:

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Reply to
Jerry Avins
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Sorry! I hastily misread your question 2. The answer is YES. If you put the collector higher than 100 feet, the static pressure will be more than 43 psi.

That's a pretty steep hill at 20 degrees. Or did you mean 20 percent grade? A slope of 20 degrees means the minimum length of your supply line to the house will be 300 feet. For a 20 percent slope, it would be 500 feet. You will probably need something to counter water hammer when you shut off the flow.

SJF

Reply to
SJF

This is a ranch, man. If there is water hammer, they'll hammer back. 8-)

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

Reply to
mm

In article , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes

I was going to ask you what you were using for hot water as that will likely be the weak point regarding pressure. Ok, no tanks, fine cylinders for that kind of pressure would be expensive. Just check that your hot water heater can take the pressure you are talking about, preferably +50% as you are likely to get pressure surges when a tap is turned off hard or say when a washer stops filling, derating helps with longevity.

Reply to
fred

to help with water hammer you can install a small bladder type tank right before the pipe goes in the house...to help take up the shock when a valve is closed. Or another way is to put a tee in the line then run a vertical pipe up a few feet and cap it...the trapped air will act as a "shock absorber" when valves are closed.

Reply to
digitalmaster

Keep the drum as near to the borehole as possible.

It may be worth your while making the drum bigger, or multiple drums, for a large water store. Then keep the borehols as small as possible to avoid losing water. If it gushes away you may dry up the water source at certain times of the year. Only you can actually know this being local to it.

Not at 3 bar there isn't.

At about 3 bar (30 foot vertically is approx 1 bar) you don't have great pressure. My house is 4.5 bar from the mains with no pressure reducer. 3 bar will give a nice shower too.

It is called a shock arrestor. It can be the size of a tennis ball. Water hammer tends to be when taps are turned off sharply, like having lever handles. Water hammer may not be a problem as any shocks may work their way back up the supply pipe.

The air pocket will eventually disappear, so best get the proper fitting.

Reply to
Doctor Drivel

The relief valve on my domestic 40-gallon heater is set for 150 psi or

210F, whichever comes first. 150 psi is about 340' of head. The actual head should be limited to about 200 ft to allow for water hammer.

If I couldn't provide an expansion chamber to cushion the shock when flow is abruptly stopped, I would use no bigger than 1" pipe to minimize the mass of water being stopped. The chamber on the hydraulic ram I sent a link to yesterday has a good model for a chamber. Any tank will do if it has a sight glass for monitoring and valves for adjusting its air level.

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

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That works until all the air eventually dissolves and is replaced by water. Then the riser needs to be isolated and drained. Install the appropriate valves to do than. (I have risers on the water lines to my clothes washer. About once a year, I shut the water, disconnect the hoses, and let the risers drain. If I don't, the noise reminds me why I put the risers in. Bladder-type tanks separate the air and water, making periodic draining (or recharging with air through a Shrader valve) unnecessary. Atmospheric pressure is the equivalent of 34' of head. 100' of head will compress atmospheric air in a riser to a third if its original volume, allowing less room for free motion (and less free volume) than appearance might suggest.

Be sure to put a valve at the top of the feed pipe to make repairs possible, and one before the shock-relief gizmo (tank, riser) so you can drain it. It goes without saying that you need a drain valve for the gizmo and maybe also an air-bleed to let air in so water can come out.

(There is a 40" force main coming into one of the facilities at the sewerage authority I'm associated with. Its downstream end has a valve for emergencies. When flow is at rated, it takes at least two minutes to close the valve without danger of rupturing the ductile-iron pipe.)

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

Ranch, shmanch. If there's a serious water hammer it can blow a fitting off the pipe. There's more than 300 lb of water in 400' of 1.5" pipe. How fast do you think you can stop it without breaking something?

Stretch in the pipe wall helps considerably. With polyethylene pipe, t can reduce the peak pressure to one quarter, down from the 1000 psi that steel pipe might generate.

There's 37.5 gallons in out hypothetical 400' run of 1.5" pipe, weighing about 300 lb. At 5 gpm, it flows at 100 fpm, or 17 ft/sec or over 5 mph. If you slam a 300lb weight into a cinder-block wall at 5 miles an hour, would you bet that the wall stands? I wouldn't!

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

I can make it more complicated for you, if you like. Pressure is force per unit area, or the weight of water per unit area. The volume of water in a pipe is V=A*h, where A is the cross-sectional area and h is the height. The density is d, acceleration of gravity g, giving a weight of W=A*h*d*g, and divide by A to get pressure, P=hdg. But d and g are physical constants, the only parameter that you can adjust is h.

So just say 0.43 psi per foot.

No regulator is necessary because the pressure is determined by the height of the tank, and I assume the tank will have a predictable position.

Also, if the pipe is too skinny the pressure will drop when the water is running because of the impedence of the line. I don't know off-hand what you'd get from a one inch ID.

If I were in cow country, I might be worried about drinking water that had been filtered through cow poop. I'll just have to trust that you know what you're doing, but you might want to get the water tested for E. Coli if you think it might be a problem.

Reply to
Gregory L. Hansen

There shouldn't be any more problem of water hammer with that set up than with a standard system with long runs of pipe. I was on a community well system (40-60 psi) with a 1/4 mile run to the well for me. Never had a hammer. No difference in flow in the pipe or dynamics of possible water hammer if the pipe is horizontal or vertical, the flow is the same.

Harry K

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Reply to
Harry K

I thought the classic way of dealing with water hammer is an upright, capped, air-filled length of pipe connected to the line.

Reply to
Gregory L. Hansen

Ooops. I forgot. Your total run is going to be well over 100 ft. 100 ft is only the rise. The pipe cost will still not be a budget breaker.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

Any standard hot water heater or well storage tank will take pressures way over that 40 to 50 psi he is talking about and they are not expensive. Not needed in his installation though.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

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A riser is a way to create a volume out of materials at hand. Like any tank with water in contact with air, it needs a way to replenish the air periodically. Because the air-water interface is relatively small, loss of air is relatively slow.

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

Place a simple air valve at the top, (the kind a tire would use) and have a bike pump to refill the air when needed. :)

Reply to
Spaceman

Gregory L. Hansen wrote: [snip]

E. Coli, cryptosporidia, giardia, the fun never ends. Plus, some possible things that may be in the water require either boiling or significant chemicals to get rid of.

They typical way that cattle country folk test the water goes like so. They elect one of their group to try the water. They don't *tell* him he's elected, just fill his canteen with the at-hand liquid. If he remains of acceptable health, the water is declared fit to drink. Socks

Reply to
Puppet_Sock

Since I do not have to pay for it, I agree! :-) At the moment it is too dark to go outside, climb the hill (it is heavily wooded forest), and triangulate height and distance--- so I do not know how long the pipe/hose must be. If I recall correctly, the 1.5 poly hose comes on a huge reel. We want to have no breaks in the hose because roots tend to get into pipe fittings when they are buried.

That would be far too good for the ranch's guests. :-) Several so-called "celebrities" have stayed in the cabin using oil lamps to see by since there's no electricity (I could name a few "celebrities" if pressed). Since propane has already been plumbed into the cabin, the idea is to use propane lamps.

As soon as the ground thaws (perhaps in May) we hope to start trenching for the water hose. That in addition to branding the calves, planting the chili peppers, and splitting wood for next winter. Gods! The work involved! :-)

I very much appreciate all who have answered my questions. It makes the job easier when someone else does the thinking for me. :-)

Reply to
desertphile

There shouldn't be any more problem of water hammer with that set up than with a standard system with long runs of pipe. I was on a community well system (40-60 psi) with a 1/4 mile run to the well for me. Never had a hammer. No difference in flow in the pipe or dynamics of possible water hammer if the pipe is horizontal or vertical, the flow is the same.

Harry K ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Actually, in your case, it is the distance from your house to the water main that determines the water hammer. Not the total distance to the supply source. The OP is dealing with a single long pipe which will create a problem unlike the usual suburban situation.

SJF

Reply to
SJF

Great! My life is not nearly as complicated as it outta be. :-)

Okay, I will. :-) I have yet to look at the on-demand propane water heater's specifications for water pressure to see what its tolerances are, but at the moment I am considering locating the water source 120 feet above the outlet.

We will probably create our own flat area on the hill to bury the water collection box (55 gallon drum), so the hill will not force us to pick a site we don't want--- unless we hit a boulder. But then we also got some dynamite.

Current water lines on the ranch are 1.5 diameter. I suppose the owners of the ranch will want to keep the same diameter, since there are already tools and spare parts for that size.

I have been force to drink such water when I hiked across the Mojave Desert and then up the length of Death Valley (for fun; no, really). Fortunately the water here is extremely clean: it comes out of rocks and flows into a concrete tank at the spring; the spring and tank are covered with plastic sheeting, plywood, and rocks. Two of the three humans who live here have been drinking it for 11 years.

For 40 years that water used to be transported down to the ranch via cedar logs that had been carved into troughs like a flue; 30 years ago that flue was replaced with hose.

There is another good spring down the canyon a mile that was once flued down to the canyon floor (well, a bench 30 feet above the canyon floor) around 70 years ago. It is located at the base of a cliff wall that rises 1,700 feet. I climb up there now and then to get a drink. :-)

Reply to
desertphile

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