Homestead mailing list

["WILLIAM JONES" <billj AT harborside.com>]

Gorden wrote:>Bill, do you have any feedback on a company called, Airlift 
Technologies? I
>live in Tehachapi, Calif. and we are thinking of the Air lift type pumps.
>Can you provide any info. on this subject matter?
>Gorden JonesHopefully Gorden is still around.I think this was for me since 
>I've studied and posted quite a bit on using compressed air to 
lift water.  I've been to see their operation near Riverside, CA.  Mostly 
they make really
nice windmills and attach compressors to them.  Their pumps are just ordered 
from somewhere else.
The thing is, any of these pumps can be used with any compressor.  The 
"spiral manometer" pump
that I submitted a few links on recently produces both pressurized water and 
compressed air in a
fixed proportion that depends on the number of coil winds.
Our new place near Portland has a creek with just enough power to drive one 
with a waterwheel.
I've decided to use the water output to irrigate the garden, and the air 
output
to pump drinking water from the well, inflate tires, or whatever.Now let's 
talk about the two pumps available from AT.>The Air Injection Pump. This 
simple yet robust pump is the key to the Airlift Windmill. With no moving 
parts, it allows the Airlift Windmill system to perform like no other water 
pumping windmill in the world.  The Air Injection Pump is a no pressure water 
pump. If pressure is desired then please refer to the Stauffer positive pump 
below.You can see this principle just by taking a short length of garden hose 
and submerging 60% of it
vertically in a bucket of water.  Now thread a drinking straw down almost to 
the bottom of the
hose.  Blow gently into the straw.  Water (foam, more accurately) will now 
gush out the top
of the hose.  The reason why there's "no pressure" is that the foam is only 
capable of falling
out the tube and into a holding tank.  It all works simply because foam is 
less dense than the
surrounding water, so is forced upward by buoyant force.But how many people 
are lucky enough that they're able to submerge their pump 50% deeper under
the meniscus of the water source than the distance they're trying to lift it? 
 For our deep
well in Coos County (lift = 108 ft.) that would be an extra 162 ft. down 
below the well meniscus!
At our place you reach sand after just a few more feet.  It would be fine if 
you had a deep lake
and just a short lift.  One not very practical possibility to adapt this to a 
shallow water
source would be to dig a deep hole next to it, just to create a tall column 
of water to
accommodate the AI pump. 
 >The Air Injection Pump is included with the purchase of an Airlift 
Windmill.Well it oughta be, since it's nothing but a canister with a hole in 
the bottom. >The Air Injection Pump is 4' Long x 3.3" Outside Diameter .  
Pumps can be made as small as 1-7/8" Outside Diameter for special 
applications. Life time warranty.        
>The Stauffer Positive Pump. The Stauffer is a positive displacement pump for 
>use in shallow wells or where up to 125 psi of pressure is desired, it is a 
>pneumatic pump designed to complement the Airlift Windmill for special 
>applications. The amount of water pressure created is directly related to to 
>the amount of lift needed. As the lift increases, the less pressure the 
>Stauffer can produce. Mr. Stauffer saw fit to make Rich (the proprietor at 
>ALT) the sole distributor of his great pump,
so you have to get a windmill in order to buy one.  That's only practical if 
you have some good
wind, which I suspect you may have, in Tehachapi.  The Stauffer design is 
unique and patented,
and shortly I'll explain exactly how it works, which I managed to figure out 
through the backdoor.
But first, I should mention that there are several other schemes for using 
compressed air to
force water confined in a chamber upward: less expensive, both purchased and 
homemade.  The
element they all have in common is a need to refill with water once the 
chamber has been expelled.
One system I saw for sale online uses an electric water-level detector at 
each end of the tube,
and these just tell a solenoid valve to change state as needed.In every case, 
water is forced out the bottom of the pumping chamber through an 
outward-facing
check valve and upward through a hose (in the active phase of the
cycle).  Once the pressure is off (in the refill phase) new water enters 
passively through an
inward-facing check valve; this means that the pumping chamber has to be 
positioned at least a few
feet under the source meniscus, else it would refill very sluggishly.Rich 
gave me just enough hints to figure out how the Stauffer pump knows when to 
reset:  1) When
you tilt the tube you can feel something rolling back and forth inside, and 
2) It requires a
"receiver tank" to store enough air to complete a cycle.  So I conclude, the 
switch to turn the
air pressure back on is located at the top of the tube, and a floating ball 
inside the tube
actuates it when the tube fills and the ball hits the top.  The switch to 
turn off the pressure
and allow a reset is located at the bottom.  The (now) falling ball must hit 
bottom resolutely
to actuate this valve switch.  If there were no stored air in a receiver 
tank, the capriciousness
of the wind would eventually place the ball gently at the bottom, the switch 
would fail to
actuate, and the pump would get stuck (as Rich told me when I picked his 
brain).Now, if you had a receiver tank and constant flow like that, the 
expelling time would never
vary.  The refill time never varies anyway, so why not just turn the air 
pressure on and off at
regular intervals?  It's cheaper, better, and easier.  Why not just use a 
solenoid valve and a
simple 555 timer chip?  Or if you're dead set against all electricity like me 
(except for lights
and computers and radios and the like, where there is no good alternative), 
how about a system
that uses a pneumatic pilot-operated valve down in the well, and turns the 
pilot pressure on and
off with a very simple system that weighs the water output at the surface?I 
realized that a complete system with receiver tank would also enable me to 
water with the
sprinkler system, using a second pump above ground.  That was enough to 
convince me that it's all
worth it, for our place in Coos County, where wind power is 
abundant.>Stauffer Positive Pumps vary in size depending on application. 
3.5", 4.5", 6.0"