Pump Before – A few days ago
During all of this cold weather we have been having I decided to go for a wander. I walked down the gully on mum’s property, also in St Bathans, and check on my water hammer pump. I checked the inlet pipe, cleaned out the make shift debris filter and continued on down to look at the pump. IT HAD EXPLODED. Much to my horror the top had blown off of the accumulator and the swimming worm (provides an air cushion in accumulator) was lying beside it, with ice globules everywhere.
For those of you who don’t know, a hydraulic ram pump is a pump with only 2 moving parts and no input of power is required. It works on the basis of water hammer creating a high pressure wave caused by the sudden stopping of flowing water through a pipe. That is not a very good description sorry, please see this [Wiki] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ramlink) for more info. Anyway, it is possible to build one for not that much, with commonly found components. I built this one and it does work very well. It is possible for me to pump with a supply head of roughly 7m up to 30 psi or 21m, It can get to higher pressures, I have had it to 60psi however the water hammer starts to get quite violent on the supply pipe. It is awesome to be able to pump running water up a hill three times higher than the supply especially considering it can run 24/7 with no power cost. However I need to do some mods on it. It tends to get quite a bit of debris in it which can block the check valve and therefore stop the pump.
Clearly I need to winterize the pump for next year’s winter. I’m thinking I will need to insulate the hell out of it, maybe putting it in a box full of insulation. Or I could bury it, making sure of course that the waste valve is exposed to allow water to escape. Not sure quite how well this second option would work. It tends to get quite a bit of debris in it which can block the check valve and therefore stop the pump, I currently have a piece of chicken wire jammed into the top of the pipe which seems to help a bit. I will also install a valve at the end so I can easily drain any debris out, rather than having to use a stick in the waste valve and getting drenched by ice cold water.
Any suggestions for improvement of the ram pump or of my writing (in)ability would be much appreciated.