www.TheDoItYourselfWorld.com

I was surfing and saw this product:

http://www.plumbersurplus.com/Prod/Watt ... 91/Cat/269

250 feet 3/8 od tubing. Id is 1/4" about $32.

How to pump water from a long distance away and control that pump without any wires from the OGC (Off Grid Camper) with Common Off The Shelf (COTS) parts.

I don't know how far above the creek the OGC is. Troy as I remember mentioned a number up to 1000 feet. Imagine with me for a moment. At the creek, we have a bucket suspended up in a tree, the bucket is 6 feet above the camper. A solar panel charges a small battery. In the bucket is a bilge pump switch installed upside down. So, as the bucket fills to a certain level, the hanging switch paddle is floated up and and cuts power off to our pump. The pump is an RV water pump or perhaps a 12v back up sump pump. I'm not sure how high these can pump but I'm betting it's quite a way. A decent size water line runs from the creek to the pump and from the pump up to a barb fitting on the side of the bucket. The switch in the bucket commands the pump to keep the bucket full.

Attached to a barb part way up the bucket is the 1000 feet of our small vinyl hose. (part way up so we don't get leaf bits and other small creek debris in our small 3/8" water supply line. Troy strings this line all the way to the OGC. At the camper end of the line, he plugs the end with an organic golf tee. The line outlet is suspended over another bucket, or perhaps running into his RV tank. When he needs water, he pulls the plug out, the water will drain out of the hanging bucket over the creek at a slow trickle. As the level in the hanging bucket drops, the solar powered creek water pump is triggered to refill it. When Troy gets enough water, the tomatoes and peas in the garden are happy, he plugs the line again. The hanging bucket rests full awaiting his next demand as the solar panel recharges the battery down by the creek.

Possibly the tubing could be found for low cost by collecting and repairing discarded garden hoses. However that might have an off flavor to be avoided and who knows if that hose you pick up was used by some RV'r to cleanse black water tanks. yuk! It's all pretty simple parts and a pretty simple concept. And, you don't have to worry about drinking water off the roof that the birds pooped on. I wonder what that might taste like? No, not really.

Advantages:
No long distance control wires are required. Simply plugging the line would be the remote control for the system.
Cheap
Simple

Problems:
The 1000' hose could freeze in winter. The vinyl wouldn't mind it, especially if you jointed it externally with vinyl hose (no hard fittings to break).

The bucket could freeze, so maybe that could be replaced with something flexible or perhaps a controlled leak could be opened up in winter so the bucket was refreshed in winter from time to time before it could freeze. A heater? Lots of energy.

The pump must be protected from freezing. Maybe some kind of submerged pump like a 12v back up sump pump would be superior.

It seems you could solve most of the problems so that on warmer winter evenings above 32 degrees, you could still get water.

The line might be damaged by animals and might need maintenance otherwise.

Your thoughts???????

Ok, I have more data. I was wondering if the weakness in my idea would be through 1000 feet of 1/4" id hose, would we only get a drip drip due to friction? So, I set out to figure that out. Since we are only allowed one link per post (please fix this for me Troy) I'll have to do this over several posts. So, here it goes. A few different online calculators are needed to figure this out. Essentially we are talking about a siphon flow calculation. However nobody has that exact calculator on line that I can find.

So, here is the first page:

http://www.1728.org/gradient.htm

This calculator page lets is figure the percentage of grade or slope. This is needed for the next page. The two boxes you enter data in are not identified well, but through trial and error I discovered you put the drop units in the top box and the distance units in the second box.

I used 6 (6 feet of drop) and 1000 (1000 feet long). The answer is .6% grade.

The second page is from a company that sells drainage pipe. They never had any idea we'd figure a tiny .25" drainage pipe but we did!

http://www.prinsco.com/article.cfm?ID=100

I entered the following data: .25" id pipe and .6% grade.

The answer is our velocity of flow would be .22 or .28 feet per second depending on which quality of plastic pipe we purchased from them. I'm presuming here that our vinyl hose will be similar in wall roughness or texture.

The calculation goes on to tell us how many acres we could drain, sufice it to say, none at all.

On to the next calculation. We needed to know the feet per second and we're taking .22 FPS away from this page.

The 3rd website which I think is just a free online calculator source lets us figure in many different units, how many gallons we get over time through a pipe of a given ID if we know the rate of flow in Feet Per Second. We do, it's .22 fps.

Here is the link:
http://www.1728.org/flowrate.htm

I set the Solve For to "Flow Rate"

I entered .25 as the Diameter. Selected "Inches" as my unit of diameter.

I entered .22 as Velocity. Selected "Feet Per Second as the unit of velocity.

It gives the answer in many different units. The one we are interested in is gallons per hour. If you roll down through the alphabetical list, I bet you can find it.

The answer? 2.0196 Gallons per hour.

You should get 20 gallons of water in 10 waking hours.
An overflowing 5 gallon pail every 2.5 hours.
48+ gallons in 24 hours.
No sore back.
No gasoline.
More time to do whatever.
More water to do whatever you want with.

And best of all, you can point to it, smile, pat yourself on the back and say, yea, I BUILT THAT MR PRESIDENT!

If you want to go through all the links, you can solve for other pipe ID sizes like 3/8" or 1/8".

Once you know the exact distance and tubing to consider, you can refine it even further. What if it's only 400 feet, will 1/8" id tubing deliver at least 2 gallons per hour? Maybe you want 1 gallon per hour or 5 gallons per hour. You can solve it. Just like that.

Another interesting page I found along the way. It has a chart for pressure based on how high the water column is. It turned out that I didn't need it, but it's still worthwhile to mention:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydro ... _1632.html

With only 100 feet of drop, there is 142 pounds per square inch of pressure. WOW, now you understand how that water high up in the lake makes all the power pushing the turbine which is 100-200 feet below.

Wow, thank you very much for all the time and research you put into this.

I am bookmarking the site with the hose. That is a nice price. When I have some cash for it, I think it will be a great help in my system.

I love your ideas, but the problem is, as you mentioned, freezing in winter. Another problem is that the water is on a neighbor's property by the time it is parallel with my camper. But I can surely use the hose for my swamp water collector I mentioned in a video. I think that may work at least to get some shower water going finally. Oh, just think, to have hot showers again.