Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So, I am in design for phase II. Phase II is without electricity. I have pond system which has a sizable flow of water (no less than 6 inch tube, year round, spring fed), It is easy for me to tap into this falling water (two meters, at least coming from the spill way) so... the thought is, why not use the power to pump water for the aquaponics?

So I have been reading. Any ideas? I am thinking of making a water wheel connected to some Rube Goldberg contraption salvaged from a bike or two which will fill buckets and carry them up a chain to dump the buckets above.

Questions:

1. Am I totally insane (partially is a given)
2. Any better ideas?

Thanks all.

Google "diy micro hydro" CRT.... plenty of stuff available... including DIY plans...

Most systems are based on the "pelton wheel".... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel

Couple of links to get you started...

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Hydro/hydro.htm

http://www.re-energy.ca/pdf/hydroelectric-generator.pdf

http://www.re-energy.ca/pdf/microhydro_template.pdf

Maybe you could adapt something like feed scoops?


Even the "commercial" micro-hydro turbines are based on the "pelton" principle... often with 4 "jet" nozzles....

ie

http://www.platypuspower.com.au/

And can produce reasonable amounts of power ...

http://www.environment.gov.au/settlemen ... s-cs3.html

Thanks, but these are pretty much all focused on creating electricity. Being contrary at spirit, I am wishing to apply the power directly to lifting water, instead of losing some of the power to electricity. Also, I am assuming, it just might end up being simpler, which means perhaps (just perhaps) more reliable.

looking at ways to lift water, that don't require electricity.

The nice thing about moving water is that speed is not important, but volume is, which is not the case with electricity.

Sorry CRT.... read it the wrong way... should have been in bed....

Thought you intended to use the fall from the spillway "for" power to pump....

You could use a similar concept though... the old "bucket" water wheel....

Spillway powers water wheel...buckets lift water to tank/spillway....to AP beds....??

Is that the kind of thing you had in mind??

There are many ways you could go about using that energy of the water flowing from the spring to provide the work of lifting/pumping your water.

First one that sprang to mind was a ram pump or water ram. It uses the energy of falling water to pump water even higher up. I don't know much about the specifics but I'm sure if you do a little searching under "water ram" or "ram pumps" you will find all sorts of info.

Now when it comes to really old fashion ways of lifting water automatically there are many elegant and high tech (though with 1400-2000 year old materials) ways to do it. The Arabic peoples in the middle east kept ancient high tech methods alive through the middle ages and I've seen some pretty cool ideas for lifting water using the flow from a powerful river to turn water wheels. The most elegant of those ideas doesn't actually use buckets on the water wheel itself to lift the water. It just uses the energy from the turning water wheel to power some other mechanical water lifting mechanism.

The fact that you have such a wonderful flow from a spring is great. I hope you can find a method that works for your situation.

You mentioned something with a bike wheel. Look up rope pumps. They can be wind driven, hand driven, bike driven and I'm sure water wheel driven. A search under "rope pump" should give you a ton more info to tinker with.

Good Luck!

There was a thread a while back about an air/water pump that worked with a hose in a spiral. The pump would use the flowing water to create a sort of hydraulic compression of alternating air and water pockets.

It struck me as a combination of siphon and Archimedes' screw principles.

By Jove, I think we got it. This is called a Paternoster Pump. You have disk that pass through a tube and lift water. I figure I will setup a water wheel on the side of the spill way, and this will haul the water up from the sump to the fish tanks.

It looks like a rope pump is pretty much the same idea - so thanks for that.



On a pure geek note, can you imagine how cool this will look?

By the way, the problem with a ram pump, it, from what I can tell, only pumps some of the water that you are using for power, you can not use the power of the water to pump a separate water system. Since Aguaponics is a closed system, it would be a no go.

Very nice picture of what it should look like.

And here's the thread that Tamo alluded to... the spiral pump (with photos)

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3411

Another link about spiral pumps...

http://lurkertech.com/water//pump/morgan/tripod/

Then there's the "Sling" pump ... http://www.riferam.com/sling/index.htm

or the "ram" pump....http://www.riferam.com/rams/how.htm

So now you just have to figure out how to get your spring flow to drive the rope pump

You can have the flow fill a bucket on a swing arm. When it fills and moves down you have a plunger force a smaller amount of water into a tube. The bucket empties and the arm goes back up and repeats. This was a method used in a small stream to get water up into the house tanks on a local farm. Can't remember how high it got the water but the house was a lot higher than the stream.

I like the idea of the rope/paternoster pump.

Some alternatives that might be worth investigating:

A DIY Piston Pump - Videos on "EMAS" and "Baptist" technologies for water supply in rural communities in developing countries. - includes full set of videos on how to make it - probably needs adapting to your situation, but it should be easy to drive from a large turning wheel - there are some nice PVC piping techniques in these videos.

What about using a car water pump (belt driven) or perhaps some direct drive washing machine water pumps? Belt drive from a large turning wheel should easy.