Here's my situation:
I live on a piece of property that's more "up and down" than flat. When
you get right down to it, I'm basically hanging off the side of a
mountain. I want a small vegetable garden next year, so I'm starting my
planning now. (Already too late in the season around here to do anything
this year - I've basically got to build it from scratch)
I'm wanting to put in about five or six 20 foot rows of sweet corn, a
couple rows each of peas and beans, half a dozen tomato plants, half a
dozen bell pepper plants, and maybe 10 hills of mixed squash and cukes -
I figure my plans will need about a 20 by 30 foot plot.
That part is fairly easy. The "fun" starts when I try to water it. (And
I'll definitely have to do that due to the climate here in the foothills
of northern California)
Y'see, the only place I can put a garden patch this size is further up
the hill from the house. Due to existing buildings and horse-pens, and
the layout of the property, that's my only option. This is OK (although
the hike up and down the hill to tend it is going to be "interesting",
to put it mildly - particularly when toting a couple of five-gallon
buckets of horse manure each trip to build some usable soil) except for
one detail: How to get water to it. The existing pump simply WILL NOT
get water that high - My chosen spot is something like 80 to 100
vertical feet above the wellhouse, and after some testing, no amount of
"choking down" the hose/pipe to reduce the amount of head I need seems
able to get water to it from the nearest hose-bib. Even if it did, the
pressure would be so low by the time it got there that the sprinklers
would be more like "dribblers".
So I've hit on what *MAY* be a solution: I can get water to within about
30-40 vertical feet of the planned garden patch using plain old garden
hose or PVC pipe "Tee"-ed off the line that feeds the closest horse
trough, so I'm figuring that I can put a reservoir of some sort (right
now, the working idea is a plastic 55 gallon drum, maybe a couple of
them, gotten as "They're garbage to us - Haul 'em away if you want 'em!"
from a local packing plant that gets their syrup for making fruit salad
in them) at the limit of what the existing pump can lift to, let it fill
the tank(s), and then run some sort of pump from the reservoir up the
rest of the hill. Trouble is, commercially available pumps for such a
task are pretty pricey, and I'm doing this on a budget that, by
neccessity, has to stay real close to zero. If I can do it using
"salvage" or "surplus" stuff, so much the better.
Right now, my working plan for the pump consists of two nested pieces of
PVC pipe - The larger diameter piece would be fixed, with a "caged ball"
style check valve at the bottom, allowing water to flow in, but not flow
out, with the smaller piece having the same arrangement, only in reverse
(out, not in) at the opposite end. The smaller piece would then fit
inside the larger, allowing a telescoping motion. (Some kind of
gasket/O-ring type seal would probably be mandatory - That's one of
those nitpicky details I'll worry about as things progress - right now,
I just want a sanity check on the basic concept)
If things work as planned, the cycle would go something like this:
Starting from "fully collapsed" (minimum overall length), the smaller
section of pipe would be pulled out of the larger, causing the "output"
check valve in the end of it to close, either due to suction, or the
pressure from any water currently in the output plumbing. As the smaller
section is pulled farther out, suction would develop in the expanding
chamber the two pieces form, opening the intake valve at the bottom of
the large section, and drawing water (or perhaps air if it isn't already
"primed" - I'd expect such a design would be intrinsically self-priming
if fed with reasonably rigid plumbing?) into the expanding chamber. At
the end of the "out" stroke/beginning of the "in" stroke, the lower
check valve closes, trapping some volume of water (or, again, air if not
primed) inside the chamber. At this point, continuing to collapse the
smaller tube into the larger would reduce the volume inside the chamber,
increasing pressure, and opening the upper check valve, allowing the
water (or air) to escape inot the outlet-side plumbing. As the
"collapse" of the chamber continues, the water inside would be forced
into the output plumbing, pushing water through the system to the top of
the hill. Then the cycle repeats.
Anybody see any bugs in the system so far?
Obviously, it's going to have to be fairly low flow. I figure on getting
around that by placing a second reservoir further up the slope from
where the garden will be, then letting gravity supply enough head to run
the sprinklers - Basically, ending up with what amounts to a physically
large two-stage pump - "Regular" pump in the wellhouse, to first
reservoir, second pump at reservoir lifting to a second, even higher,
reservoir, then gravity driving the water from the second reservoir
through the sprinklers and onto the garden.
Sane? Insane? Somewhere in between?
Next concept is trying to power the secondary pump - "Grid" electricity
is pretty much out due to the distance from the nearest source - Better
than 300 feet. It'd be pretty pricey to make it happen, not to mention
being at least worrisome to me in terms of potential fire danger. (A
*VERY* serious concern in these parts - A spark from a bulldozer blade
hitting a rock got a multi-thousand acre, umpty-bazillion dollar fire
going last year - In the "Isn't it ironic?" department: the operator was
in the process of cutting a firebreak)
Gas engine is less than desirable due to aesthetic concerns - I live out
here "in the backside of beyond" at least partly because I want as
little as possible to do with engine noise, and running a gas engine
would rather soundly defeat that concept. However, I'm realist enough to
understand that it may end up being my only viable option. (never mind
the fact that the price of gas is going to eat into my savings from not
having to buy my produce at the store...)
I'd be tickled pink if I could manage to run this thing from a windmill
(not likely due to location, but maybe...) or solar (Got a few PV panels
hanging around, although I don't know the ratings on them), if I could
figure out how much "oomph" I need to do the job. Obviously, that's
going to be a function of how large my sections of pipe for the
secondary pump are. Anybody got any numbers for me to tinker with on
that front?
As far as actual power transmission, I'm thinking some sort of cam or
perhaps crankshaft type mechanism to turn rotary motion into linear.
Obviously, it's going to need to be "long throw" - unless I settle for
only refilling the "working" reservoir over the course of days...
Details of the linkages and such are just that: details - They can be
worried about later, assuming I don't get shot down in flames because
the basic idea has more holes in it than a screen door.
So... What say you, folks? Is my concept at least workable, or should I
look in another direction?
--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
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> On 6/20/05 9:17 PM, in article wMKte.1430$p%3.11085@typhoon.sonic.net, "Don
>
> Some cut.
>
> > Y'see, the only place I can put a garden patch this size is further up
> > the hill from the house. Due to existing buildings and horse-pens, and
> > the layout of the property, that's my only option. This is OK (although
> > the hike up and down the hill to tend it is going to be "interesting",
> > to put it mildly - particularly when toting a couple of five-gallon
> > buckets of horse manure each trip to build some usable soil) except for
> > one detail: How to get water to it. The existing pump simply WILL NOT
> > get water that high - My chosen spot is something like 80 to 100
> > vertical feet above the wellhouse, and after some testing, no amount of
> > "choking down" the hose/pipe to reduce the amount of head I need seems
> > able to get water to it from the nearest hose-bib. Even if it did, the
> > pressure would be so low by the time it got there that the sprinklers
> > would be more like "dribblers".
>
> More cut.
>
> 1 psi will lift water 2.31 feet.
That's seriously helpful information. (No, I'm *NOT* being sarcastic)
It also tells me that my estimate of the rise is probably off quite a
bit - 55 psi (the cut-in for the wellhouse pump) times 2.31 = 127 and
change feet, so I must be that high already when the water stops flowing
from the 5/8 inch hose. At that point, I've still got a pretty long ways
to go, vertically (but probably only about a hundred feet horizontally)
before I get to the site I hope to use. I'd guesstimate at least the
same distance I've already covered to get there. (Anybody got an easy
way to figure altitude on an uneven surface?)
Assuming I'm somewhere in the ballpark by calling it another hundred
feet of vertical, that means I need something like another 50 psi... Hoo
boy...
Maybe another "intermediate stop" is in order - In which case, I need a
second "secondary" pump.
Any ideas on how much pressure a pump such as I described in the
original post might be able to give me?
>
> Would anything here be of interest?
>
> http://www.surpluscenter.com/home.asp?UID 05062021382845
>
> They have a lot of pumps, some with DC motors. They probably have some
> surplus DC motors that you could mate with one of the pumps. Some of the
> combined units are under $100.
A lot of things there would be "of interest", but $100 is about $79.95
more than I care to spend to get this thing going.
When I said the budget needs to stay close to zero, I meant *VERY* close
to zero - A few bucks, meaning *SIGNIFICANTLY* less than a hundred, for
hoses/plumbing parts, etc that I don't already have on hand/can't
scrounge/can't make, max.
The goal is to do it with the absolute minimum cash expenditure I can
get away with, and dumping a hundred bucks on a pumping setup blows that
out of the water before I even get started.
I'm hoping/trying to get away with this for under $50, TOTAL cash outlay.
--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html> for full details.
XML site map
> the hill from the house. Due to existing buildings and horse-pens, and
> the layout of the property, that's my only option. This is OK (although
> the hike up and down the hill to tend it is going to be "interesting",
> to put it mildly - particularly when toting a couple of five-gallon
> buckets of horse manure each trip to build some usable soil) except for
> one detail: How to get water to it. The existing pump simply WILL NOT
> get water that high - My chosen spot is something like 80 to 100
> vertical feet above the wellhouse, and after some testing, no amount of
> "choking down" the hose/pipe to reduce the amount of head I need seems
> able to get water to it from the nearest hose-bib. Even if it did, the
> pressure would be so low by the time it got there that the sprinklers
> would be more like "dribblers".