Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - [Homestead] Water Pumping with Compressed Air (was Unpreparedness)

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "WILLIAM JONES" <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: [Homestead] Water Pumping with Compressed Air (was Unpreparedness)
  • Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:01:05 GMT

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"

  • [Homestead] Water Pumping with Compressed Air (was Unpreparedness), WILLIAM JONES, 07/25/2012

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page