bike pump/ alt. bike tech

[doombear]

I live and grow food on a river, with my plants being about 15 metres away from and 8 metres above the water level. we used to have an electric water pump to pump water up from the river onto our land but it got flooded out a few years back. since the tubes are still all in place i was thinking about makign some sort of bicycle water pump. i have been having trouble finding schematics however and was wondering if anyone knew anything about this kind of thing... or any other alternative pedal powered technology.

 

[wartomods]

no idea

 

[finn]

Well, you basically have 3 options of which only two are actual pumps. One is a conveyor system- like a chain of buckets or an Archimedes screw- not considered a pump. The second is a piston design where you can have something like a stairmaster type exercise machine to power it. The 3rd is a centrifugal or centripetal pump, which lends itself best to bicycle power. The strength of a conveyor system is that it doesn't need to be primed unlike the other two.

You also have the option of the ram pump, which is a water current powered design- there are plenty of designs for that on the web.

 

[Bendixontherails]

Finn's right. The centrifugal pump is the easiest to adapt to pedal power. it's likely that was the system used to pumop the water in the first place, so you might even be able to salvage the pump.

Basically the pump will have an inlet and outlet fitting, to attch the hoses to, and a shaft coming out the side. by turning the shaft an impeller moves around and pushes/pulls fluid ( or air ) through the pump. if you attach a pulley to the shaft and fabricate a mount on the frame of a an old bike so that a belt or rope can go around both the rear wheel of the bike and the pulley of the pump you can make it work.

or check out this video.