Kinda. It’s just a matter of getting water to flow uphill. Without using any artificial power. Just flowing water. It’s a hydraulic ram.
There’s a 50′ ridge between our garden and the creek that must be 100 yards away
There’s a 50′ ridge between our garden and the creek that must be 100 yards away. We do have a gasoline powered pressure pump that doubles as a fire pump if there’s an emergency. It’ll get more than enough water over the ridge in an emergency, but at much too large a volume and much too high a pressure for gardening.
So we’ve put a 200 gallon vertical tank at the high point of the ridge. From there it gravity-feeds enough pressure to run a sprinkler and/or drip lines down at the garden. It’ll also gravity-feed drip lines to my exotic pines, raspberries, sea buckthorns, birches and larches and all the rest of the stuff that I’ve forgotten the names of.
In other words, it’ll run water by gravity practically anywhere on the property. But it still seems kind of a waste if we know we can pump water for free.
The gas pump dictates that I have to run down to the creek to start it, run back up the hill to watch the tank fill, then run back down to stop the pump. But I now have four hydraulic rams; three that I made myself, and a smaller one I bought locally, believe it or not. It was from John Obstfeld of John’s Services, the tank and pump guy at Shallow Bay. His business has since been absorbed by other tank and pump guys.
Before the flood (not the biblical one) to get a head of water, I had at least 100 hundred yards of 4″ sewer pipe feeding water from a beaver dam to an eight-foot vertical pipe. This six- to eight-foot head of water supplied pressure to three drive pipes connected to three rams.
That all stopped when the Mud Lake beaver dam broke and caused the flood that carried my gas pump 30′ downstream and filled it with sand. Fortunately I had not yet set up my hydraulic rams.
And with our pretty little creek now scrubbed down to bedrock, it’ll be an interesting problem setting them up again.
Let’s try it:
OK. No more beaver dams to boost the head of water. That means more 4″ sewer pipe over a much longer run right in the creek. And before the environmental outrage starts, 99.9 per cent of the water that enters the pipe returns directly to the creek. The remaining 0.1 per cent eventually goes over the ridge to stuff we’ve planted.
The rams themselves each consist of a 1½” drive pipe, two check valves, a compression chamber, and a ½” diameter delivery pipe.
The sequence starts with drive water running right through the first check valve, into the open air and back into the creek because it’s stopped by the closed second check valve. That’s the 99.9 per cent.
In a few seconds the speed and volume of the water overwhelms the first check valve spring and the valve slams shut.
The sudden pressure overwhelms the spring on the second check valve, opening it. At full speed and pressure it can’t go anywhere else but into the compression chamber. Oh and a tiny bit into the delivery pipe.
Meanwhile, the momentary relief allows the first valve to open again, which allows the second valve to close. And the sequence starts again. The remaining pressure in the chamber drives a tiny amount of water into the delivery pipe. It has nowhere else to go.
That’s the 0.1 per cent on its way to the garden.
At least I think that’s what happens. Maybe it really is just magic.
Eventually little orgasms of water squirt into the tank fifty feet up the hill. If I connect all the rams to a ¾” manifold it becomes a small stream of free creek water accompanied by the syncopated clack clack clack of the first check valves closing.
It’s not just magic, it’s music.
