I've looked through the archives and can't find what I'm looking for, but it this has been posted before, please forgive me. I'm looking for a good set of plans for building a hydraulic ram pump to pump water from my creek uphill to my garden area. I've seen plans on the Internet for pumps you can make for around $50, but in the three instances where I've written to the person selling the plans, no one has gotten back to me. I would REALLY like to build one of these. Does anyone know where I can find some simple plans? My creek has a pretty good flow (maybe 8-9 miles an hour?), but the head is something I'm not certain of. I'm thinking I can always make a short rock waterfall of about 12" from top of fall, to surface of water below. The water in the creek is about 13" deep. My garden is 42 feet higher than the creek. If anyone needs to see pics of the site, I'll be happy to get out my digital and post them h

-- CD (CDOKeefe@aol.com), December 03, 1999

Answers

I looked into ram pumps last February. Finally ended up buying 2 from Rife Hydraulic Engine Mfg Co. They work great. They have a web site but I forget what it is. www.riferam.com maybe.

However, I found a lot of info (including plans) on the net by searching for "hydraulic ram pump".

Here is the formula (Rife's) for determining how much water you can pump:

gpm = (Flow in gpm) * (head in feet) / (Vertical elevation you want to pump to) * 0.6 (efficiency of the pump).

Flow in mph is a nebulous figure which won't mean anything unless you know the width and depth of the creek at that point. Assuming that it is 5 feet wide, an 8 mph flow would equate to 8 miles/hr * 5280 ft/mi * 5 ft wide *13 inches deep / 12 in/ft / 60 min/hr * 7.48 gal/CuFt = 28500 gpm.

Therefore, potential to pump = 28500 gpm * 1 Foot head / 42 feet vertical elevation * 0.6 = 407 gpm.

You could pump a lot. Many of the plans available use PVC and may not be as efficient as Rife's design, but I doubt you need that much water.

-- Tim Jacob (tjacob@nb.aibn.com), December 03, 1999.

I know we've published plans for an inexpensive ram pump and the feedback from folks was that it worked just fine. The plans MAY be in the download section of our website so check it out at http:// www.homepower.com

Our webmaster, Michael, is our ram pump guru and gives workshops on them. If you don't find the plans or need help he's a great guy and wonderful resource. Don't know if the back issue that has the plans in it is still available. I know it's on one of the CDROMs containing all the back issues but don't know which one offhand (I'm not in the office right now). Hope this helps

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), December 03, 1999.