Expanding Water Reach with a Water Powered Pump

I have been fascinated by the power of water for years.  I saw a fantastic documentary many years back, that described how ancient temples were built to incorporate water and it's physical properties.  Water placed into a specific bowl or pond might start movement that opened doors that weighed a ton.  There was a classic book detailing these engineering feats, but the name escapes me presently.

Modern day, we've taken this to create things such as hydraulic ram pumps.  I saw this video earlier today, and it's potential astounds me.  If someone was able to raise a smaller portion of water higher in elevation, they could use that water to pump a higher volume of water upward.  The pump in this video pumps 2 gallons of well water for each 1 gallon of feed water.  

What do you think?  Is this redundant? Or, could you see a ram pump being used to fill a reservoir to act as a source of pressure to pump more water?

If the power is out how likely is it that the city water will be out too? This still requires a pump whether it be electric or gasoline in which case you’d be better off just hooking up a trash pump and pumping direct.
Depending on the application required a water ram could be what you’re after.

Did you see the video? This is a backup system for when the power is out, and designed to run long after any battery can last.  No, this doesn't require power to pump, just the water pressure from the city source.  Perhaps with this information, you can see the value of the technology or at least why I am investigating it.

I am going to use this without power, and without the city water source.  The pump is advertised as just under a thousand dollars installed, and that's with running a second line to the pump from the city water.  At this price, the pump isn't expensive, so I imagine that a DIY version can be made without much cost

I only discovered ram pumps this year and I'm entirely fascinated by them. You can definitely make them on the cheap with some simple supplies from the hardware store. I'm hoping to build one next year and throw it in my creek to get a constant flow of water up to my garden pond. For me, this pump seems extremely ideal. If I were to tap into the creek at an elevation above the pond, I'd need to run hundreds and hundreds of feet of pipe. But with a ram pump, I should be able to tap into it much closer since I only need a fraction of the flow of the creek. I was originally looking into solar powered pumps to do this for me, but the struggle is that the creek is very shaded near the pond and has very steep banks (from grazing). I'd need to spend a thousand or two in pumps & solar equipment to get a trickle up to the pond. But I've got plenty of flow and a decent amount of vertical drop, so I think the ramp pump would outperform that setup — and be less maintenance — AND save me a ton of money.

Ram pumps are elementary when compared to this pump, but that's just my opinion.  I intend to use this type of pump in a system with my ram pump.  The pump will feed the water that creates the pressure for this water driven pump.  Ram pumps are indeed fascinating.

Ah I see, I was assuming this was a type of ram pump since the video didn't really describe it's functionality at all. It sounds like a bit of a reverse ram pump — you input a small, high pressure stream and you are able to pump out a larger, low pressure stream. To be honest, I'm not sure I see much applicability for this one over say a generator and a sump pump. The laws of thermodynamics are always going to get you, and you need more energy in than comes out. With a ram pump, this works because we usually have a fairly unlimited (well — much more than we need) energy potential from the vdrop + flow of the source (be it a spring or creek). This kind of pump seems like it's more designed for hurricane country where you might have a flooded basement you need to pump out ~10ft or so, but no electricity. I suspect in a closed system the efficiency losses of this type of pump would come back to bite you in a big way.

They are using the venturi effect  to create an aspirator or ejector-jet pump.

Venturi effect.

Aspirator

You can probably find them on amazon or elsewhere for much cheaper than what they are selling. Or just build your own.

We use them in industrial applications to suck sand or ash out of pits using pumped water through the vortex to create a suction on the ash.  If you have water with head pressure it could create a suction on a body of water and move the body of water to another location. You would have to do all of the calculations to get what you want in your situation.

Here is a simple one.  Notice that they attach pressurized water, which is water with enough head to create pressure, to a j shaped pipe. At the bottom of this "J" you see a nozzle which creates higher pressure and a vacuum. The opening around the nozzle then sucks up the water in the barrel, along with the water in the supply piping, and pushes both together out of the discharge piping. This moves the supply water and the "pond" water to another location.