Bicycle Water Pump

[Bro. Williams]

Alright. In reading a book by Rob Roy, he mentioned that he had a bicycle that he used to pump water for his house, garden, outside use, etc.

Questions:

1. Has anyone used one?

2. Does anyone know where something like this might be sold?

3. How does pressure get stored so that you don't have to ride it the whole time you need the water to be pumping? (I assume the pressure is in the line and the tank, is that enough?).

4. anythinge extra to add?

[Windy in Kansas]

For starters, no, I have not used one nor seen one.

I expect a simple pump that might be used would be off of a washing machine. I seem to recall that some of the older units had belt driven ones.

I think with any of the bicycle powered pumps you would only have water flow while actually pumping unless you stored the water in a tank, possibly an elevated one and then used gravity flow. I suppose one could adapt a shallow well pump to build pressure in a conventional system but gravity would work best.

If you had a conventional water well with well cylinder and pump head set up for windmill, you could power it with a pump jack powered by bicycle instead of by wind power. It would be very easy to bolt a bicycle sprocket to the belt pulley and use chain drive from a stationary bicycle unit. You might also be able to put a pulley onto the bicycle. Don't know if a belt could be rigged around a bare rim or not.

On a different note--the Amish sometimes use Savonius style turbines/rotors to pump water according to Mother Earth News. An old publication of theirs even told where to purchase plans to build one. Any wind in Kentucky to power one?

Guess I'll have to check out Rob Roy to see if I can learn more.

[Bro. Williams]

We have some wind, yes, but it isn't something to bank on.

What I do have is a good flowing creek behind my property (I don't think it has enough drop to use a Ram) that I would like to pump water from to use for gardening. I would like to set up the bike (instead of a hand pump), if possible from this. There is a drop from the property, to the creek, of about 15-25 feet. It has never been measured that I know of.

[Tweetybird]

What you would do is pump,either with a hand pump, or bicycle pump, fromthe well or cistern, to a tank located upstairs so that gravity feed would allow it to flow down to the sink(s) downstairs.

I remember as a child in the Out Islands of the Bahamas,we collected water from the roof and fed it into a large cistern (we had 3 of them). The front cistern was also our front porch, an we used a semi rotary wing pump to pump it into a tank upstairs. It then drained down into the kitchen sink so we had running water.

[The Paw]

A Canadian non-profit developed some "pedal power" prototypes for use in Guatemala. The Guatamalean organization has taken over the project in conjunction with Bikes not Bombs in Boston. The Guatemala group is

http://www.mayapedal.org/

There is also a description of how to make one on this site, and if you root around the site there is also a schematic of one. No detailed pictures yet though...

http://workingbikes.org/node/100101

[Windy in Kansas]

Not a conventional pump that we think of, but basically pulling a series of plugs through a pipe to lift the water between plugs. Kind of like the old chain and cup lifts.

Should work but the plug and chain or whatever would be exposed to the elements as shown.

[crafty2002]

They make small pumps for electric drills. If you put the smallest pulley you could find in the pump and run the belt from the rear rim on the bike that would gear it up something like 18 to 26:1 ratio. It would spin the pump fast enough to pump water but I don't know about building up pressure enough to store in a tank.

A ram pump doesn't doesn't need a whole lot of head to work. An easy way to check the fall on a creak is to use a 4 foot level, a 6-8' gives you a better reading though), a ball of masonary string line and a tape measure. Take one end of the string and tie it to something as close to water level as you can that won't move. (a small tree or large rock).....
Have someone else on the other end hold the string as tight as they can and use the level and tell them up or down until they get it right. Measure both ends above the water, subtract the smallest from the largest and you have the fall.
A ram with plenty of water will pump water 25-50 feet on 5 foot of head.
If you are doing it for a garden, you can pick hose pipes from dumpsters that has a small hole in them and works great with some added 1/16th " holes drilled in them for a soaker type waterer.
Even if you only got a few gallons an hour it would run 24/7's all by itself after you got it set up.
That is a lot of water if the holes are right over the plants and just make a drop every minute or two.
If I had a creek that is what I would do.
I got over 300 feet of old hose out of a dumpster last week. I probably have close to a mile of hose so far. I made a cap to screw on them so I could stop stealing my nozzle ever time I find some and I check them as I bring them home. I would say 30% of them didn't need anything but a washer. And the ones that do leak doesn't leak much.
The ones with big holes in them only needs a piece of 1/2" copper pipe and two clamps to fix that.

I would aleast look up ram pumps and measuse the flow and head I had before fooling with a bike.
JMO
Dennis