Comment on Water is running again, ram pump installation year 2
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 6 months agoIBC for collection, I plan to set another on top
Sorry, just those two for now. I’ll need to gather courage before I wade into the stream again for a closeup, especially with my phone in hand. With the heat returned I also was busy installing the hose from IBC to garden to water the veggies. I’m still figuring out the connection between the two IBCs and mixing water coming from a heating panel, and waiting for a washing tank to arrive to go next to it. And then the summer heat and the corn field will dry the stream out in no time … I hope this system runs till End of July at least, but to be honest I don’t know. But even if I have this running only one month on ‘stream energy’ and 11 on electric it will be worth it.
I think ram pumps are lovely, they are so robust - it just took a couple of hours to get it back into the stream and back working (it also got a couple of hours of maintenance in the workshop, of tightening the connections again). This year it runs on a really slow frequency compared to year 1, and it seems to pump the water higher. I’d like to get some numbers one day, but it’s hard to measure anything exactly around here with our installations. Only thing I know is they run so robustly. They find their rhythm and then they just go and go and go.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Indeed not so much to see on those pictures. I am a bit surprised that your ram-pump is inside the stream. Those I have seem previously were outside, but I guess you tried to maximize the head difference for the main flow?
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Exactly, I’m working with just 60cm head, which is on the lower end of it working at all. Maybe next year I add another 100 m of tube to reach a spot where the pump can sit outside the stream.
If you have been diving into ram pumps before, I’m curious if you have found any infos about one thing I haven’t had time to research or experiment with: does the distance between the two valves make any difference in terms of efficiency?
poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
I am by no means an expert on ram pumps, but I would guess no. The impulse valve and the air-chamber are the more likely places for optimisation.
I have really only had a look at them out of personal interest because they are relatively common in the area I worked during the disaster relief after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. To my knowledge the ones I have seen where based on the design found in this classic manual.
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Oh there’s a lot of info in this that I didn’t have, thanks for sharing!
I don’t think anybody knows them around here. I showed mine to my neighbour and explained her that it doesn’t use electricity or fuel and she looked quite impressed. The mountain areas here with water running from every hill are just ideal grounds for the rams. I’m still trying to figure out how they could be not just used for gardening, but wisely integrated into fire prevention. I know I can’t just water an area indiscriminately with a ram pump - the pump works till July or August, grow lots of vegetation, which then dries out and is a fire hazard. But maybe something with restoring vegetation around old waterlines first, or storing the water in reservoirs. Ram pumps in combination with reservoirs make great energy harvest and storage as well.