WORLDS SIMPLEST WATER PUMP!! Make a PULSER PUMP! (with Captions)

[@macrumpton]

I saw a similar device years ago that had been built on a waterfall in South America. The main pipe ran parallel to the waterfall and down to a chamber with a drain on the bottom. The water and bubbles were carried down the pipe to the chamber and because of the weight of the water the bubbles were compressed, so when the water reached the chamber the compressed air was trapped there. It is the worlds simplest air compressor, with 1 moving part.

[@newfiegeo]

Brilliant! No moving parts, and incredibly simple! The only draw back is the required flow of water. I was thinking of taking this system and building it off of my eve troughs from my roof at my cabin. This pump could then deliver 'some' of that water to a small tower thus providing me with an elevated resevoir to pressurize my cabin's water system. I don't need much water up there so it may work well enough. Data on flow rates would be great!

[@winnyb123]

I learned a lot! I knew nothing about these pumps until I watched this vid. The animated diagrams were helpful. I'd like to see more of the display pump with clear hosing using the bike pump. Again. Cool!

[@arekussu]

Much appreciated! It truly shows the simplicity and the actuality of water and air power. Thanks for the video, it gets my mind in a good place!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Thanks HappyJack, I cannot build one because I moved to a city. So this is all you get. Some people have done small ones across the world and shared their results on youtube (probably big ones were built too). I really expected engineers to test this in a big facility by now. 6 years and 876 thousand views should be telling them something. Politicians decide funding for testing and politicians do not care about stuff like this. It is to be tested in England this year, no word back yet.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

I dug it by hand, one summer when the stream dried up. I think the hole was about 15 ft deep. I have pictures on the tripod site. Most people hate the idea of a deep hole. Eileen from the windowfarms community suggested a "pulser pump nano" that doesn't go so deep (just 1 or 2 meters) runs a bundle of 1/4 tubes to pump water. I did proof of concept (I have no stream now) and that works too. Check the pallet garden project. 1 tube uses about 20 litres of air per hour. Many tubes needed!

[@htomerif]

I understand how the pump works. I can see how it would have some serious drawbacks in terms of reliability under different flow rates and water levels that would be found in the real world. The bubble flow seems to be a limiting factor, as does the diameter of the up pipe. The ram pump does have a few moving parts, but its still very reliable for developing areas.

[@tim76239]

Thanks, I think you may have saved me big bucks. I am building a self sufficient sustainable farm/ranch and currently was upgrading an existing pond to raise fish. a pulsner pump will be a great way to circulate water for aeration it is far less expensive than a windmill system

[@lorenzo42p]

nice idea. no wires to run, just a supply of running water. I'm sure there is a lot of room to improve the design in new innovative ways. I'm thinking the inlet and the main down-spout that pulls the air bubbles down is probably the most critical part. the more bubbles make it to the bottom, the more power the pump has. first thought, try filling the inside of the large pipe with a bunch of smaller pipes suspended inside it the entire length. this might give it more vertical guidance.

[@titanlurch]

i used something similar for vertical gardening. it's called the bell principal.Using a small aquarium air pump with a hose leading into the bottom of a water reservoir and loosely fitted into a larger hose leading up to the top of the gardening containers, the water is pushed up the larger hose and waters my veggies.

[@gfdgf2]

your voice is so calm its chilling

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Thanks John, I put it on youtube so that the big boys of science research could do the equations and the variables thingy. I couldn't possibly afford to do it and even if I did, how would I get people to believe me? First time I put the pump on the net, I was called a liar, and that went on for a couple of years. You do not want a vortex, you need turbulent flow to get the air down. Air is inducted by accelaration due to gravity. A student in California is studying it now. Finally!

[@carringtonblush]

Thanks for sharing your experiments with this ancient, forgotten invention. Is the Trombe "obsolete" as ozzirt argues? Assuming oil supplies are infinite, permanently cheap, and have no adverse effects on the environment, then yes. If any of those assumptions are wrong, then Trombes remain a useful piece of technology for extracting useable energy from water flows, with little initial cost and no ongoing cost.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Yeah, it is called a trompe. For some reason, people did not make small trompes and they did not connect them to air lift pumps. In regions with large waterfalls, you can just get your water from above the waterfall, I guess. In flatter places, the trompe airlift pump combination is probably very useful. But I have waited over 20 years for scientists to try it out and still no go! Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

No, you are going into the perpetual motion world! It just does not work like that. I think the limit with really low head like this is maybe 35% efficiency. If you has 2 meter head, greater efficiency can be achieved. They are testing the pump at a university in England probably before June. Hopefully the results will be shared openly.

[@utub3aka]

very nice. i love it. i live in a 3rd world country and will definitely put it to the test, it could help lot of people for irrigation..

[@sixmagpies]

You're a very rare and intelligent man Mr White, to be thinking totally outside the box like this. Such clever stuff. And it's self-evident that your 'organic' pumping system can so easily be leveraged to, either, improve delivery height/pressure, or the total volume (larger number of small pipes feeding from the plenum chamber.) This makes ram pumps look positively over technical!

[@imtotob]

simple is best thats why admire you for sharing this to the rest of the world

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

You use the power of the difference in height to pressurise air that is then used to pump water a lot higher. It is easier to understand if you split it into 2 parts. You need to drop it low to pressurise the air. That part is called a trompe. And the part where the pressurised air is pumping water up is called an airlift pump. You can check wikipedia or internet glossary of pumps for more info on those. Brian.

[@1crazyfocker]

on a side note, i am not downing your work, hell i completely understand, I am an inventor in my spare time, and get defensive over my ideas too. but it dont change facts. the main reason these went the way of the dodo is this, it's very inefficient, from this they used the same head of water to run a pump for air or water (30% to 250% gain) it just didnt stand a chance. but its still cool that you thought of it with out knowing.

[@yellowmetalcyborg]

Big science is not interrested because williamson pumps are easier to install, more efficient and in some cases more durable for the volume of water they pump. Williamson pumps don't use any energy either but the can be built to pump huge amounts of water very high into the air. Thanks for posting!

[@blackXSpr]

@CearaQC Of course. The water systems they used were very simple and utilized gravity and some even used the Venturi effect. The Venturi effect used smaller openings which led to larger diameter pipes to force the water to increase speed up the pipe to create the high-shooting fountains. Interesting stuff really! Take care

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

You are welcome to try! The mixes of air and water that flow through are by nature turbulent. I made about a half dozen of these pumps as I experimented and there were reasons for my choices. In one case i had a screw that throttled the airflow in. When I did this more water sucked in and through the power stage to pump more water at a lower efficiency! (Efficiency is not everything) I have a web page with more details and refinements for anyone who wants to make one.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

You need a small stream with half meter or more waterfall close by to provide the power. You have to dig the hole (probably 3 meters deep) divert some of the stream or river into it and collect the low pressure air. (this is called a tromp or trompe) This low pressure air can be piped to the fishpond and used to pump some of the water and oxygenate some of the fishpond.

[@mad4us]

I like your comment , simple big scientist r not interested. I hope your video sends a message to everyone. That is people can sustain themselves with knowledge. In 10 years people will become the real survivors. With or without money. The sustainers on this planet will be the ones that have the knowledge to renew Gods free rescources.

[@catdaddyy]

@gaiatechnician you and guineapiggyman are both right, it is possible to do it without any pumps, however the resulting pump will have such low efficiency that it would have no real-world application. Anyone serious about needing to pump water in usable quantities would install the parts guineapiggyman is talking about.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

You can look up trompe or tromp on wikipedia (for compressing air). Pumping with air is simpler and nothing wears out. No adjustments were required to pump to 1 meter or 5 meters. The real point was to prove that you can use very low head water power to do useful work. (0.5 meters head and 250 to 350 litres per minute flow.) All the fish in the sea will be gone in about 60 years (sea will be too acid for fish to live from CO2!) but NOBODY uses low head hydro. There is lots of it unused!

[@imegatrone]

I Really Like The Video From Your The pulser pump uses hydropower with no moving parts! It is just pipes joined together.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

In a general low head situation, you cannot put the trompe on an incline without major losses. (The air bubbles just go to one side of the pipe and goes back up quickly). You need that vertical flow to keep them mixed evenly. However, I do not know the what the case might be in high head situations.

[@watchthe1369]

Trombe pump. Cool! You can use steam in place of air in the lift pipe input and run your pump from a boiler and any burning stuff.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Thanks, Tim, hope it works out for you, as long as you have at least 1.5 ft (half meter) water fall and at least 300 litres per minute of flow you can make one. Then it is just deciding how much air you can get and what pressure you need. These things will never "take over the world" but they do have niches where they are useful.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hugh, 969 thousand people have watched this video so it cannot all be bad. And footage from another one was included as part of a program about engineering around the world that was played on trams in Zurich a few years back. (they sent me pictures of my video playing in a tram). Many in the "windowfarms" community use my "T-joint method" to pump water to their plants and my "airlift in a bucket" method too. I am successful. This video does have captions. Use them if you have problems.

[@CAMacKenzie]

This is one of those simple ideas that should be obvious, and about which I find myself saying "Why didn't I think of that?!" After all, I've heard of compressing air in just this manner, and of using compressed air to lift water, but somehow it never occurred to me to put them together. I've gotta build one, If I can make it work, I'll make a vid & post it on KZbin.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Just a note that students at Queens university ontario Canada have done models in April 2010 as part of a course and put their results on appropedia. Results were better than they expected and they also have some very good references to other papers on 2 phase flow. Field tests of full sized pumps are supposed to follow. I do not know their time frame. They made a video of one model and I think it is still on youtube.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

I am all for experimental science, but I suggest that you try a scale model first. And remember to share your results. Brian

[@packrat541]

The potential energy of water at a high elevation produces kinetic energy when it falls to a lower elevation for example hydroelectric power. I have a very old book showing an air compressor using falling water as the only moving part that powered equipment in a mine so it is no surprise that water can be pumped using the compressed air produced by this device.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi, Hugh, I don't have any problems with my English at all and I am proud of where I came from and what I have achieved. Lots of people speak English with an accent. Including the Queen and her family. And I think accents are great. The more the better. As for spelling, I don't care. I think the country with the most English speakers should decide how it is spoken and give elocution lessons to the rest of us. What do you say to that, India and China?

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi Sunny, I have some playlists (mostly of other peoples work), that shows ways to use "low grade power" and very small power sources to do useful work. "weird and wonderful alternative energy machines", "wimpy power for the masses". Combining low energy water power, wind power, solar power, etc to pump air around a low pressure "pneumatic grid" is technically easier and cheaper than an electrical grid. The compressed air can then be used to pump water, etc. It runs my pallet gardens

[@flamedrag18]

attach a one way valve to the outlet and you could have a far reaching water source, nice work.

[@jondeeca]

Fascinating - thanks for pointing me to this, Brian.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

John, I agree. Thank you. Perhaps someone who has a 5 ft water head will take note? I never had more than 1.5 ft head to work with. I now live in a city and I have donated this project to the commons. There are no patents so anybody who has a suitable site can do this research. (Or not). After 50,000 views or so, I expected some environmentalist actor with buckets of money and 18 swimming pools might have noticed this and had that research done and publicized. One day? Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@mariogabrielg I would argue that no venturi effect is needed in this device. The tromp section just needs acceleration due to gravity to suck down bubbles. No narrowing of the pipe is needed. Thanks Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

It has 2 parts, I guess. The first part is called a tromp and it PRODUCES low pressure air. The second part is called an airlift pump and it USES low pressure air to pump water. Other people have made pulser pump videos too and it is also on wikipedia and in the internet glossary of pumps. Check those for an explanation that works for you. Note that the airlift pump entry on wikipedia is a "commercial" for another type of pump. Wikipedia don't seem to care.

[@sspoon9827]

very good inspiration for further the environment preservation, no fuel consumption need. thanks.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi Sunny, It is not really practical. Check the weird and wonderful alternative energy playlist for for low tech ideas.These tanks filled with water store energy but withdrawing some of that energy to pump water (as the water is being used by the apartment dwellers) will also slow down the water going the the apartment dwellers. And given that their system is low pressure, it is probably slow to start with! And, even more important, more pipework means more danger of sanitary failings.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Bill went too big on his tromp for most people (including himself!. Mine are smaller but I went too big too! BUT you can do useful work with a tromp that is only 3 or 4 ft deep. A 1 meter deep tromp can pump water with the pulser pump nano idea. (Bundles of tubes instead of 1 pipe for the airlift can pump water effectively) I am working on several concepts. Pallet gardens, ebb and "float" hydroponics and "lungfish" hydroponics all to run on 1 psi air. (extremely low pressure air!) Brian

[@jjchan60]

thank you so much for sharing the info on the newer site. that helped me more, as well.

[@nickkitchener6155]

Pull out a piece of paper and work it out for yourself. This is a hydraulic so the air compressed = the weight of water in the primary column. This is your force. The height with with you can then raise the water is dependent on the volume of water in the hose. The max height will be when the amount of water in the hose = the amount of water in the column. You could pump the water 100 ft if the hose was thin enough.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Video is about 10 years old so no chance. It is in Ireland, I am in Canada. There is a pulser pump playlist too with video from peole in England, Indonesia, etc. There are also some newer pulser pumps round the world. You just have to convince someone to film theirs and post the video. I live in a city and do not have access to a good site. Sorry.

[@samppazzz]

No. Intake material including both, the air and the water. Different hights, between water source and finale states, where the water comes out, using kind of capillary attraction, which allows water to cyclically pumpability. You can read more about wikipedia or somewhere on the Internet :)

[@gregsimonson4312]

Pistons? in the oil industry we call them rabbits, when a gas well is getting old and pressure wont lift the water to surface, we will set up a timer and catcher on the wellhead, drop a steel rabbit down the hole, well will shut itself in for a specific amount of time to let pressure build then valve opens and gas water and rabbit come sailing up the pipe, up 1800 meters on some of our wells, then rabbit will stay up in the catcher for a specific amount of time then valve closes and it drops to repeat the process. So yea a piston would work well for going long distances

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Thanks Greg. Interesting concept. Unfortunately, I no longer live on a farm or near a river where I am allowed to "play". Would be interesting to try pistons to either help move air down in the tromp part or to help reduce slip in the airlift pump part of the device. The limit for "relatively" efficient plug flow in vertical pipes seems to be not much more than 1 inch diameter. So this will always be a small scale device. Pistons would also be very interesting in the "inclined pipe" version. There, the "wave in a pipe" could push the piston along like a surfer. I never got to do much with the inclined pipe version (it seems more likely to work well with larger pipe diameters and I did not have the money to buy them at the time of my experiments) and its great advantage is that the pipe can just lie on the ground and pump uphill). The inclined version with its "waves in the pipe" seemed the most miraculous thing at the time! Sometimes the waves or pulses of water would be more than 20 seconds apart in that version. You also don't need to build a 10ft or 15 ft high tower to pump straight up with the inclined version. This was a big advantage too. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@dragossorin85 A stream or river is needed to drive the thing. I am not sure what you mean by unlimited. There are always limits. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Indygogguy, did you look at any of the pulserpump nano videos or the windowfarms research videos yet? I think they can clear up your confusion. Anyway, the pulser pump has a trompe that provides pressurised air and the pressurised air works an airlift pump (which is the vertical pipe that pumps the water up. It is smaller than normal airlift pumps and lower pressure, and it uses "plug flow" to do the airlifting. Plug flow is efficient but high pressure fast pumps cannot use it.

[@1crazyfocker]

@gaiatechnician true true. i agree 20 years later the pump with no moveing part (as long as it does not get gunked up or air lock) would still be working. but dont forget the history of this, or the airlift pump by it self. it main use was for water removal, not for "pump" for use or drinking or anything. plus it needs a set water level that could easly stop the air flow, compared to a water wheel as an example. if i needed a pond filled and time was not an issue sure i would use this or a ram.

[@nick0sav]

The "bubble lift" part of pulse pump was widely used (at least in SU in 1970-s and earlier) as a pump for aquarium filters. The obvious advantages were that it utilized the air flow of cheap air pumps anyways used for aeration... and was stupidly easy for DIY.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Yeah, the main difference is that I tried to optimize pipe sizes and air pressures to get higher lift from low pressure air. Surprisingly nobody has done that experimentally before I did. Following the pulser pump, a lady suggested why not test a "nano" pulser pump. A smaller version with just 3 or 4 ft of water column pressure generated (and trying to get that to do useful work). (So just 1 to 1.5 psi of air pressure). I tested and designed low pressure air pumps since then and got to the stage where I could use 1 psi to pump over 10 ft high and even could use extremely low pressure (4 inches of water column) to pump water over 5 ft high. Prior to that experiment, I was told that 20 to 1 lift to submergence ratio was impossible. It clearly isn't because I put video on of my experiment and it was replicated in north America, Europe and Asia. (this was in the ourwindowfarms community last year). Experiments are valuable because theory is often just one person's idea of how the world "should" work. We should do more experiments to determine the true limits of low tech devices.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

I am aware of ram pumps. Before making the pulser pump I made a ram pump in the stream. But it didn't handle the muck that our ducks made every day and kept stopping. Also, when it was working the "water hammer" shook everything in that area of the stream. Ram pumps existed long before Williamson. I didn't have either a 1 meter fall or the need to pump 40 ft high. Have you priced out ram pumps?

[@JDCubed789]

a simple rig could be set up to calculate variables. Starting with a 5 ft water head & 2 inch & 1/2 inch pipes. See how high water can be pumped and at what volume/min. Then change the Height of the tube to see how this changes your volume/min. Plot these values over different tube heights. Then start changing the diameter of tubes and water head, and repeat. The result will be a series of overlying curves plotted on a graph(s), giving you the start towards developing an equation.

[@yellowmetalcyborg]

@gaiatechnician One more thing, these pumps are also pretty easy to make, they don't harm fish because you can put a small filter at the mouth of the pump. Doesn't algae grow inside pulser pumps? It seems to be an ideal habitat because of flowing water, bubbles in entry water makes the water oxygenated and the walls of the pump are a good support.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@SoftwareForFree Yes,Split process just means separating the airlift and tromp parts. The water gets pumped from above the dam (so the height that you pump is reduced by that amount, so you gain that. In split process, between the tromp and airlift section, I put a constriction. Depending on the water speed through the tromp, you can get the air "pulsing" towards the airlift section. The constriction stops that pulsing. I did tests and the smooth flow of air to the airlift was better.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Actually a guy in England has just done a pulser pump model and put it on youtube. I think it is on the gaiatechnician youtube channel as the featured video.

[@danielhoffman2299]

Brian, I understand you quite well...LOL.. Some folks that comment can't seem to argue the principals outlined in the video so they have to pick on phraseology, spelling, punctuation Etc...Very well done..

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

There is no point in attaching a small turbine, with my tiny prototype, 30% of the energy was removed. With bigger pulser pumps, more of the energy will be removed. So there will be not enough energy left to turn your turbine. The only way I see it working is if you could turn off the air intake to the pulser (basically turn off the pulser pump) any time you need electricity. Better one or the other, I think. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Anyway, I couldn't test it with higher power head, (because half meter was the max I had). The tromp section was about 30% efficient with 1/2 meter head. I have seen English research (totally different project) where they used 1 m head or 2 meter head and they claimed around 60% efficiency making low pressure air! I did my measurements around 1990, I don't have the financial capacity to go further. The videos were released in the hope that a university would complete the work. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi, Danny, I don't think Ping pong balls will work. I think the floating piston (which is just an R+D idea) will work if you can find a wettable hard foam or sponge that you can cut into spheres of a suitable size. I only ever did it with little polystyrene balls that I broke apart from some sort of polystyrene casing that was made of polystyrene "bubbles" of various sizes stuck together. I manually submerged them and they produced much better liquid holdup. Potential for large improvement!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

It certainly is not over unity. You multiply the liters per minute going through the big pipes by the distance it falls. Thats the power. Then you multiply the liters per minute by the height it is pumped for the pumped water. dilivered/power=efficiency. (I do not think it is more than 10% for my pump). Half meter head and 4 meter pumping. I suspect if things were optimized, efficiency could be 3 times as much.

[@vicmende4413]

will try out,builds creativity in unexpected situations.thou i thought some analysis cud help like:varying ratio of water head 4 intake,outlet and whether any air goes through to lower basin.

[@briandavis414]

Sweet... didn't quite get how it worked completly, but have an idea... should be put into use where ever needed, since it's so simple!!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Brian Davis Hi Brian, the main problem with the pulser pump is that you have to go about 3 meters deep beside a river or stream and people are reluctant to do that. However there is another option. I call it the pulser pump nano, and the idea was given to me by a lady called Eileen Jackson. You can make a "trompe" that is only 1 or 2 meters deep, and harvest the low pressure air from that for useful work. So 1 meter deep creates 1.4 psi and 2 meters creates 2.8 psi. And you CAN do useful work with that compressed air. Check out my pneumatic grid project and pallet garden project for more details. I have pumped water 5 ft high with 4 inches water pressure! (and it is on youtube). 4 inches is about 0.15 psi. I believe that if people try making low pressure trompes, my work on the extreme low pressure airlift pumps can help them do useful work with tiny energy sources all over the world. BUT people have to try. We cannot wait for universities to test these things, Their testing cycle is a whole year long and it is a learning expedition for the students, and unfortunately both times the pulser pump was tested in universities, the tests had fundamental mistakes in them. (Which by the way, I could easily have spotted, I did not see the experiments until after the results were published.) In one, the tromp worked 2 or more airlift tubes but the guy neglected to put air taps between the tromp and the airlift tubes. This mistake ruined the experiment but he published his results anyway. Due to the missing taps, the results were mediocre. All the air went to one tube and it went to churn flow (not plug flow) and churn flow is far less efficient than plug.

[@briandavis414]

Brian White Be neat if you could put together a system that you could sell??

[@StayPrepared]

DAMN. Why am I watching this HD quality video.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@winnabego A guy in England did a pulser pump video where you can see inside. It is called Cornish pulser pump on youtube

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@broadwayFan28 Part is called a tromp and the other part is airlift pump. But it does not work like a commercial airlift pump. They make an emulsion of "fizzy water" and they pump because the density of 100 ft of emulsion is much lower that the density of 100 ft of pure water, so it goes higher up a pipe than pure water would.. The pulser pump pumps with plug flow or slug flow. That is a type of fluid flow that is akin to waves in the pipes. Slug flow is also used in the oil industry

[@blackXSpr]

@CearaQC Yes it was. A pressure, gravity and pipe-opening size based fountain system. Exactly what they used before electric water pumps to create fountains at their estates

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@imtotob Ram pumps are useful too but they have at least 1 moving part. This pump can also extract energy from low head - large flow sources and it does not produce water hammer. It is lower tech than ram pumps and that is also useful in certain situations where repair might be an issue. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Yes, it needs a stream of running water. It is not very "efficient" and it does not pump very high. Its advantages are that it is cheap and simple and it uses water power that sits unused anyway. The big disadvantage is you have to dig deep! BUT if you want something easier, there is the pulser pump nano! The pulser pump nano goes about a meter deep, and makes approx 1 psi air (7kpa). You use that air to pump water through BUNDLES of 5 to 7 mm tubes. Pallet garden playlist has more details!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

It was about 2.5 meters below the exit water level, so about 3 meters below the entry water level. It isn't a hydraulic pump. It is an airlift pump.

[@SOAHCSOAHCSOAHC]

This is very interesting to me, and I'd like to learn more about the science behind it, practical applications and more detailed procedures for producing them. Do you have a website or some files you could send out?

[@rhythmriderone]

Interesting, and look forward to applying this concept for pond oxygen and the washing possibly. A slightly augmented version of this is the trump compressed air and refrigeration described by Bill MollIson in his permiculture 02 presentation .

[@anthony9thompson]

Love your work. Id like to build one of these to lift water from a very small creek to top up a dam.I only have about 40cm of head and need to lift the water about 3m. The dam is located about 10m from where the pump will be located. Have i got the right setup for this pump to work? Thanks

[@PBates123]

I liked your video and really like where ever you made it. It's quite beautiful. To improve the pump making it less sensitive to water level. I thought of a swimming pool strainer basically - the input requires some air be introduced into the system to work so the inlet side needs to be at just the right depth to suck a little bit of air. If you have a floating bucket that moves up and down with the water level then put notches in the rim to regulate the amount of water. Good luck!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@run0hard9 My test pump was in Ireland, I used it to pump water to sheep (5.5 m) higher and cattle (3 m higher)that were housed in sheds for the winter. I had another (smaller) one that I used to pump water to a garden and to sheep in another field. Basically,regulations were changed and farmers were not allowed to let their animals drink from rivers anymore. (because of cow poo and sheep poo getting in the rivers). The pump meant that they could still get the water without poo in the river.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

The whole point is to use the local small scale power locally. Have you tried powering a Brumby pump with half a meter head from a stream or river? Charitable missions can only use a Brumby pump as long as they can pay for fuel or electricity to run the pump. If the mission leaves, the pump (and the locals) are dead. So try to imagine a little world where that half meter head is the ONLY power source. Because that little world contains many people and a Brumby pump cannot help them.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

I used the hand powered bicycle pump to demonstrate air lift pumps and plug flow. 4:08 was an old camera that took really crappy video in 2001 when I was back in Ireland for a few days. My brother has a video of the same pump splashing water on his daughter from about 10 ft up. "Pulser pump (airlift pump)"

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

There is nothing stopping you from repeating it. They have repeated it in England, Indonesia Canada and the USA. We cannot all be doing magic, can we?

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

The chamber has an inlet and an outlet. The pressure on the air in the chamber is determined by the height of the water above the outlet pipe (not the inlet). There is a Cornish pulser pump video (from England). It is worth taking a look. I really did pump to 8 meters high with the pulser pump in the video. It doesn't matter whether you agree with that or not. It just is. And it is easily testable.

[@lorenzo42p]

another thought, you don't show much of the inlet in your video. what depth range works best? an idea that comes to me, a large floating funnel just below the surface a few inches. gulp up lots of air. if it wasn't 1:30am, I'd go out to buy some parts to do some experiments!

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

You misunderstand how it works. That is fine, because when I first saw it working and measured how much water it pumped, I was surprised too. I suggest you join the windowfarms community. Or check my windowfarms playlist. It is easy to pump water to 13 ft high with just 1 psi of air pressure and many windowfarmers use a technique i showed them to pump to 8 or 10 ft high with 1 psi. The energy came from water falling over a dam. In my case it was about 300 liters per minute falling a half meter.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@mad4us The bicycle pump was used in a demo of how low pressure airlift pumps work with "Plug flow". So, it was not part of a working pulser pump, just the airlift demo. I made that clip in about 2001 and there was no other clips about plug flow airlift on the internet at the time. At that time, everyone showed airlift pumps that worked by the air bubbles making a very deep column of fluid less dense. Most people do not even know plug flow airlift exists until they see this video.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Yeah, you pretty much have it in a nutshell. There are still lots of places without power. My pumps were just tiny prototypes. Larger ones would be more effective and not that much more expensive. Nobody is using low grade power now (less than one meter head). so any power you get from pulser pumps is an addition the the world's supply and can replace fossil fuel use. I no longer have access to a stream so I cannot make any more pulser pumps. Someone else must do it. Brian

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@cornifron It sounds doable but note that I dug a hole about 15 ft deep by hand. (Which is a crazy dangerous!, use machinery or at very least shore up the sides really well as you go down). Inclines are deceptive too. It might be more than 6 or 7 ft. I found that pumping straight up and letting it drain is better than pumping up an incline. Check out the nano pulser and nano airlift idea, if you try that, you may not need to dig so deep. Sadly, there is no research yet on nano pulser

[@johnconrad9781]

Great work😊 serious hydro pwr implications

[@horstschlawutzke6645]

As a scientist I can confirm it works, like Bernoulli's principle. Its not of industrial interest because of the low efficiency. At remote places it can be useful, though.

[@sethmitchell2176]

Stefan Sulzbach Ein Wissenschaftler, du sagen? Ich bitte zu unterscheiden :P Nicht zu sagen ich nicht einverstanden, jedoch.

[@Fahnder99]

Seth Mitchell Where do you disagree?

[@CearaQC]

@blackXSpr Ah thanks! I thought so and always wondered if it was true. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

[@TheOriginalEviltech]

I had made somethig like this to filter the water in my fishtank, and it wos powered by the airator bubling in a pipe wich went 10cm over the watertank level, trough the filter and than back in the tank airated and cleaned. I made it like that because it didnt require any moving parts and it didn't hurt the fish, even when it sucked one of them in the filter... still havent seen one patended! Oh and mine works by decreasing the dencity of the fluid in the pipe so the other fluid pushes it out.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

No, you use a stream or river to provide the power. The "internet glossary of pumps" has a simple explanation and flash animation of how it works. Brian

[@cornifron]

Hi gaiatechnichian this looks neat and possibly easier than building a hydram pump. Could you please respond because I am trying to pump water from a small shallow creek, which I can dam, and then use this pulser to water a small 1/2 acre garden. The creek is about 250 ft away with a small incline to the garden of about 6-7 ft. I am guessing this may work very well using 4 inch pvc and smaller diameter garden hose. The steady incline would push the water and air up

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

@corsycle Basically it is like a waterfall. Water falls over the edge of a waterfall and accelerates as it falls under the influence of gravity. If it is high enough the water becomes spray mixed with air. In a tube or pipe the acceleration happens too. Water is not expandable so something has to fill the gaps as it accelerates. If there was no air entry, the water would simply go faster and faster. The air bubbles capture some of the energy from the falling water and slows it down.

[@surfnfx]

Brian. A Coffer dam is a temp dam to divert water away from the area you want to work in. Then it is removed after the work is done. Also did you dig a big hole to put all this in? This is the part I do not get, how to install your pump system. It looks great and also can keep a pond / head water cleaner with the air in the return air water part. Can the return air water mix be put under the water to get more air into the head water/ pond?

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Sorry, Not everybody In 2009, Matt in Cornwall, England made a video showing a working model (on youtube) and a guy (in the yahoo group) did pictures of his model somewhere in the USA. But I do not believe either of them had the suitable site to do a really good test of tromps linked to airlift pumps. A large one day test could easily be done in a large swimming pool by a plastic pipe company or by one of the rich environmenalist singers or actors or by a university.

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi surfnfx, I don't know what you mean by coffer dam. Costs are very low but the windmill pump will probably pump higher. Depends on what you want to do. Brian

[@phillipgaley]

And though Wikipedia as a reputable source, be debatable, certainly, it does a bang-up job of presenting a lotta good stuff. As for your stumbling over the operation of a thing so simple as this pump, it's quite simple: the primary stage collects bubbles which, being directed to the lower end of an immersed tube, in spurts, the bubbles force water up and out. "A good understanding have all they who love G0D's precepts." I rather think, there's the root of your problem, . . .

[@Brians-Easy-Low-Tech-Solutions]

Hi, Thom, I have data ( it is only from my old prototypes and test models) I thought stream I used was too small to be practical. In my case, between 250 and 400 litres per minute went through the pump to produce the power. It fell 45 to 55 cm to produce the power. (This changed a bit over time with modifications) and it produced 3.5 to 4 litres per minute at 3.5 to 4 meters high. This also changed depending on where the water tank was. It also pumped to 5 m and 8 meters.