Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So I was thinking about turning on the Amish to AP, but they aren't supposed to use electricity (except for their businesses). I am impressed by the "low energy" AP style like Travis' barrelponics. Tony from WA's cool solar and wind powered house triggered this thought experiment too. (I had a mechanical alarm clock once, and it was superior to an electric one IMO other than the daily adjusment)

On the way home tonight I was wondering about totally electricity-free AP, and I bet one way this could be done would be to use a big weight (like a barrel full of water) held up some height and using pulleys/gears to convert this potential energy to pumping energy. The idea would be for your hapless yeoman to pull the barrel up with the ropes in the morning, and the weight would slowly lower during the day, whilst driving a pumping mechanism. This would be kind of like a grandfather clock. Maybe it would be possible to set something like this up to provide 12 hours or more of pumping for a small AP system. Imagine the bragging rights among your permaculture buddies when you say that you are not using electricity at all for your AP system! It would also be very cool if you could make one that could run for a weekend without input, to go away for the weekend, and to be free from power outages.

Extra bonus points would be gained by constructing the pulley/gearing with say two ten speed bicycles, which might be readily available anywhere in the world. I am thinking to drive the first crank, then the first bike's wheel would drive a second bike's crank, so that the second wheel was heavily geared.

To pump the water you could use a water wheel connected to the axle, or an Archimedes screw, or one of those spiral tubing pumps wrapped around the rear wheel.

Maybe this could be another design challenge like the wheelie bin one?

Now why didn't I think of that? That is an awesome idea.

Many years agoa as a child I read a readers Digest Condensed book called The Ugly American. One of the Peace Corps volunteers designed a pump for rice paddies by hooking a bicycle to an old engine and used the pistons to pump water. Apparently at the time in vietnam or somewhere in Asia there was cheap labor, plenty of bicycles and old small block engines laying around.

I really like your concept Dave

Great idea!
It would be easy to put a couple 20 foot poles and let a heavy weight slowly work its way down all day long while turning a pump or lifting buckets of water.

I can not find it now, but there was this pump that could move 50 gallons of water in 60 seconds only turning it by hand. Some people called it the ezekiel pump. I once found a company selling them to Africa where farmers would hook them to a bike and pump a thousand gallons of water in 30 min!.

I know these work because I got to use on at a show. At that time a con-man named dennis lee was selling them, but he was just slapping his label on someone elses product.

If anyone knows who sells theres please pm me!

Dave, you got the wheels in my head turning.

180 Kg (400 lbs = 50 gallons * 8 pounds per gallon) * 9.8 (gravity meters per second squared) * 3m (height) = 5292 joules / 50 watts (for example) = 118 s = 2 mins. Need more weight and/or height and/or gravity!

The coupling of a falling weight to the rotational energy of an Archimedes screw is fairly simple. You just need 45 degree meshing gears. The top pulley could have a geared edge meshed to a horizontal gear with a vertical axle turning the screw. Someone better at mechanical design than me would need to figure out the gearing ratios.

Another way would be to have the falling weight turning a cam shaft with a piston in a closed volume water tank with an outlet going up to the GB.

I think the key is that, like in a glockenspiel, the energy of the weight moving incrementally has to be much greater than the energy increment in moving the water. Water is pretty heavy, so I believe you'd need a very massive object moving slowly throughout the day.

Just had a thought... instead of suspending a weight high up in the air, you can do the same with a weight falling into a bore hole. Might be a bit safer

how about a bank of springs? the slingshot ride i went on a few years back was set up like that using springs as energy storage. two people sat in a sphere that was anchored dowqn by an electromagnet and tethered by two wire ropes, over pulleys to a HUGE spring box, a few big wattage 3 phase motors ran for at least 3-5minutes tensioning this springbox, it was half the anxiety watching this, knowing how much potential energy was stored there. anyway, electromagnet gets switched off and the sphere gets launched a few hundred meters (yes ) into the air at i forget what G's.

You could potentially store manu hundres of Nm force in such a spring box...........but then at what point does a device become taboo?

I have had this thought for a while i keep thinking of a thing i would like to invent its something like a large round thing with spokes and a hole in the middle i still haven t thought if it would be good for anything yet

Maybe you could use the falling weight just as a backup for a wind-powered system (since you have the structure to raise the weight already?). The coaster brake on a bike could be used to stop the falling weight when the wind is going? Bore hole yes tamo!

For a spring-based thing you could steal them from car suspensions. Either cattle or donkey or human-powered, or maybe a moped could run for 15 minutes to charge it up if you wanted to cheat? Maybe a new TV show called Junkyard Aquaponics could be pitched to the networks?

garage door springs would be a better bet

Very cool.

I was just on an Amish farm the other day. He used solar panels to charge his electric fence. I wonder if the solar panels would be acceptable to run a pump and charge a battery to pump water overnight.

Different Amish groups have different rules, right down to whether they have buttons on their clothing. (If they can't use buttons, they use straight pins.)

How about hydraulics? Make a tank after the fish tank that is really a large piston with a weight on it and one way check valves on each side. The tank would need to be large enough to hold all the water you would pump for the day. Place a large weight on the piston and through out the day it would press the water out into the elevated grow bed where it would return to the fish tanks. Then at the end of the day someone could open a air valve and raise the piston and water from the fish tank would begin refilling the tank. In the morning close the air inlet valve and release the weight. At 60 deg F water pressure is 0.43197 psi/ft. So you would only need enough weight to overcome the distance you are lifting the water plus a little more to get the Gallon per hour you wanted through what ever sized pipe. I.E. if you were pumping your water up 5 feet thats only 2.16 pounds (per square inch) plus perhaps another 10 for water pressure! That would be easy enough to lift back up!

Good thoughts- Now how do you expect me to sleep tonight! Hehe

I quite like the weight and gravity approach, what about adding "displacement" into the equation?
Dense materials displace more water so the 300L "blocks" in the pic would only need to be 150L if they have twice the density of water

You`ll have to forgive the very dodgy graphics

a peristaltic pump i think is what this is called

CHeers