Ram Pumps - Simple Robust Technology

[Mark Parsons]

In my quest to find a natural powered water pump to supply my cottage with pressurized water I ran across the Hydraulic Ram Pump.

A good reference: http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/Equip/ram.htm
How it works explanation http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/Equip/ram4.htm

A friend and I have the same goal for our recreation properties so we cobbled up the unit shown in the photos on a Sunday afternoon. Photo 2 shows a close up of the waste valve and check valve and plumbing. Now that we finally have some water flowing locally as spring is barely arriving we had a chance today to go out and test our contraption. It worked better than anticipated! We found a small local stream (roadside ditch) and set up our unit with 20 feet of 1-1/2" ABS drive pipe with 14" of drive head (measured with water level). After very little trial and error the unit was pulsing away. It produced over 30PSI from 14" of drive head. That is over 60 times pressure amplification!! The flow test for 5PSI outlet pressure indicated about 0.25 GPM. Simple robust technology.:cool:

The waste valve appears to be the only tricky part. A 2" plastic check valve purchased from Princess Auto for $20 with the spring removed and some washers for dead weight serves the purpose nicely. I'm sure further tuning will provide more GPM and PSI. Having this test rig work first hit was definitely a plus.

This test rig my friend is going to use in his application where he will have about 3 feet of drive head. Not sure what he is going to do with up to 90PSI. He will need a pressure relief or face the ABS snubber section blowing off. My application will have about 1 foot of drive head so will need to tweak the PSI to top out over 35PSI to provide a nice cottage water pressure. I am also considering ways to make it freeze resistant so will have year round pressurized water powered by the creek. :D:D

[Rob Beckers]

Mark, how is your pump holding up?
I'm curious how (well) it works. So far the only RAM pumps I've seen are these 100+ pound cast-iron monsters. Making one from off-the-shelf plastic parts is an interesting new take on it. From what I heard RAM pumps work well. One just needs enough water flow, since they have relatively large amounts of waste water for what they pump.

-RoB-

[Mark Parsons]

Hi Rob,

My friend has taken possession of this pump. He will be using it at his property shortly when the snow is gone and his construction starts. It will sure beat carrying buckets of water from creek uphill to cement mixer...:D Will report back with his results and any problems. During our short initial test the plastic valves looked good for the application.

I plan on building one of these pumps without the large ABS surge / snubber section. I figure the long (120 feet) poly pipe to my basement and the large (80 gal)surge tank there should snub the pulse effectively. Key question: Will one of these work with the waste valve submerged? If no answers are forthcoming, I will be testing for results. With the waste valve (and all other parts) submerged in fast non-freezing water I should have a nice year round pump for cottage water system.

OT - I see my handle is now "Green Guru" and my rep level has increased to 12. Not sure how I accumulated these accolades... :o

Regards,
Mark

[Rob Beckers]

OT - I see my handle is now "Green Guru" and my rep level has increased to 12. Not sure how I accumulated these accolades... :o
Mark

I can shed (some) light on that: The board assigns 'titles' to people based on number of posts. The defaults are things like "new member", "member", "senior member" etc. I've edited those to more reflect the 'green' nature of this forum. If desired, you can also set a custom title in your user settings page.

The reputation level is based on what others think of you. People can add to someone's reputation. There's also a default increase (in smaller increments) based on how long you've been on the forum, and number of posts. The idea is that it gives some measure of "reliability" to others when they read one's posts. Presumably someone with a high reputation knows what they are talking about.

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

I'd book into that green guru's ashram for a weekend...what a learning experience that would be!:p

Congrats Mark

Ralph