Hydraulic Rams to lift water. Nil energy consumption after manufacture

Hydraulic Rams to lift water. Nil energy consumption after manufacture

These units are the ultimate in water pumps. They work 24 /7 and have little maintence.

They can lift water in an extraordinary way, using the energy of the water flow and air pressure.

For more details this site is very good.
Hydraulic ram facts

Manufacturers
Blake Rams pricing etc

Papa pumps

Green and Carter

A research paper worth reading
Research paper very good

The Bunyip pump seems a worthy competitor.

http://www.portasaffordablepumps.com.au/

These were a DIY concept years ago. Interesting that there are now commercial versions.

I wonder, how noisy are they? There's a lot of force involved. Will neighbours complain about the "24/7 post pounder?"

The commercial versions were first made in about 1818 and one company is still making them today.
When a product has been selling for 200 years and from my own experience they do not make enough noise to cause aggravation with neighbours.

I dont understand why that was even bought up?
Do you want to be the first to identify an issue with a 200 year old product?

There is also the Papa Pump : https://papapump.com

I'm completely smitten with the idea of one - I mean, if you have flowing water there is energy there that can be utilized to pump the water.  What's not to like?  There used to be giant banks of these on the Columbia river to send water into irrigation districts.

There are antique ones - and some which have indeed been running for a century or more.  They do make a rhythmic ticking noise, but that can be mitigated with a pump house.

Alas, I don't have one because a) I don't have the necessary weir/dam to collect the water and feed into a pipe.  and b) I'm not sure that I've got enough flow anyway.  My situation may change, but I may be stuck with an electric  and some version of a well.

You do noit need a weir, just something to hold the pipe stable

John C Daley wrote:The commercial versions were first made in about 1818 and one company is still making them today.
When a product has been selling for 200 years and from my own experience they do not make enough noise to cause aggravation with neighbours.

Good info, thanks. I didn't realize the design was that old. I only ask out of curiosity, since I haven't seen one in operation.

John C Daley wrote:You do noit need a weir, just something to hold the pipe stable

Well, you might not need one but I do!  

Yes, you can just drop a feed pipe into a running stream - I've seen it done (in youtube videos).  I don't have enough flow to do that - I would need to capture ALL of the water and for that I would need a dam to collect it all and force it into the feed pipe.

If your flow is small enough that you would need to collect it all, then a dam to collect it would not need to be large. It might need to be fairly massive to stand floods, depending on the characteristics of your situation. If you have no legal impediments to putting something in the watercourse, the practical issues should be relatively minor.

Back in the early 1970s, my father installed a ram pump on the outflow of our spring to deliver water to the house about 600' away and 10' higher than the spring. It was small, considerably smaller than the ones I have seen on the websites linked from this thread, but worked fine for a family's water supply. Except, of course, when the plunger valve stuck in the open position in the middle of winter and we had to walk 600' through the snow and across a ravine to unstick it in the morning so we could wash up before school...

Eliot, what sort oif flow do you have? It must be very small, I am amazed its working.
But well done.
Glenn I am trying to find smaller rams.
In Australia where I am we dont have large snow areas, so sticking valves have not been an issue for me, but I can imagine the walk.

John, I don't have one (yet).  I'll have to engage in some earthworks first.  In the summer the flow of the springs might be as low as 2 gpm, which will not be enough for a pump.  I also need to see just where the collection dams go so I can determine the feed head of a pump.

Our ram was fed from a 3/4" HDPE pipe about 100' long and about 20-25' head. The whole pump weighed less than 40 pounds, I would say, and was about a foot or so high. It ran on probably less than 2 gpm, maybe 1 gpm.

I'd like to add Seth Johnson's products from Land To House to the list of where to buy a ram pump:

   https://www.landtohouse.com/

I was looking into the Papa Pump brand for quite a while, but became turned off very quickly by the way they rudely treated potential customers online.  Seth, on the other hand, is quite the gentleman.  So I'd rather have his good customer service, plus a serviceable product that I can build or repair from scratch if needed.

On his YouTube channel,   [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/c/LandtoHouse/about[/youtube]    he teaches you all about how to use them, install them, clean them, and how well they perform.  

He even teaches you how to build one from readily available materials from LOWES or what have you:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/K8Fy__ThqpQ[/youtube]

George, that is a fantastic link.
I watched every video. That tube pump is an interesting concept. I am interested to see if its successful.
In Australia we have a product called a Platypus pump.
I will list its details when I find them.

Glockemann pump
Maker of Glockemann pumps

Bunyip pump
Maker of the Bunyip pump

I made a DIY "linear ram pump" from a design I saw on YouTube, and made some changes so the internal parts would be more serviceable, and replaced with tractor tire rim liners used as the rubber check valve and ejector valve hinge/ seal.

Tested it completely submerged, and doesn't make a sound.

I only tested the pump under simulated conditions, never had a chance to install it in a river as I was planning. I was short on intake line length by about 100 feet to have the intake above the rapids and pump setup at the bottom, to hopefully achieve enough difference in hight for the ram pump to work.  



Sorry I broke my phone with photos and videos on it, so here's a link to my Instagram story highlight if anyone is interested to see it in action. The pump in the video isn't the completed version, I have schedule 40 pipe for the final version, but I wanted to test it before committing to permanently glueing approx. $400 CAD of pipe and fittings together. Granted some of that cost was for threaded reducers, so I could experiment with intake line diameters. I settled on 1.25 inch cause I had about 220 feet of it laying around. The person who came up with the original design suggests the use of schedule 40 pipe up to 4inch diameter, larger diameter than that he suggests metal pipe.

https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODUyNDUwNjgzOTEzNzkx?igshid=omryt5sgk560&story_media_id=2328844804497869628_32809280

Hi, does anyone know if there is a Canadian or USA distributor for the Bunyip pump?