[kevin]

I've got a well. is there any way to get water out of it easily if you've got no power? (i'm talking the kind of well for the house; has a pump that pressurizes tank; feeds the faucets, showers etc. how to get water out when no electricity, no generator? seems like its an endless source of fresh water if I could just learn how to tap it in an emergency.

[mark188]

try lehmans out of ohio...they sell hand pumps that will fit over your well casing.

[mark188]

Product Search Results - Lehmans.com try that link

[cowgirlup]

Kibby told me that Bison makes a manual pump that will work for even a deep well.

The other option we need to look into here is an alternate energy source (solar, hydro, wind) to power the well and septic system we have.

[robsdak]

I would go with the manual pump, as a kid growing up in Indiana, uncle charlie had 3. 1 out in the yard, 1 by the barn and one in the kitchen. The rest of the house had pressurized water, and 2 sinks in the kitchen.


Miss them days, only to be a kid again.

[tjwilhelm]

Hi Kevin,

Others have already pointed to this. I'll just chime in my support. A good, old fashioned "Jack Pump" would be my choice. It's a simple, submerged, positive-displacement pump that sits at the bottom of the discharge pipe. Because it operates as a discharge-lift, vs a suction-lift, you can pump from much greater depths (Total Dynamic Head).

Further, these old hand-operated jack pumps can also be operated by the old fashioned windmills, with a crank on the turbine axis that oscillates a rod (the "sucker rod") that's attached to the pump.

Rintoul's Hand Pumps

[kevin]

cool. thanks all.

[Shep]

A bored well bucket is the ticket as an alternative to a hand pump. You can buy them from Lehman's or here: Living Water PVC well bucket
or build them yourself out of PVC pipe. Inexpensive, always work, almost nothing to break or wear out. Just need a rope to tie 'em on, lower away, and when you pull back, the flapper goes shut on the bottom and up comes a load of water.

[tjwilhelm]

Hey, Shep! Very cool idea. Thanks!

Here's an interesting one I've tried, but it requires a source of compressed air -- this could be from a mechanical wind turbine attached to the shaft of a compressor, or even a bicycle-driven compressor...

It's called an "air-lift pump." You drop a thin air line down the well, with a fine-mist diffuser on the end of the air line. When compressed air is forced down the air line, and out of the diffuser, it enters the well as a fine mist of tiny air bubbles...as a FOAM. Because the fine-bubble air-foam is less dense than the surrounding water, it immediately and rapidly gets forced right up to the top. As the foam spills out the top of the pipe, the bubbles break and the water which formed the walls of the bubbles spills out around the discharge pipe.

Probably not a practical approach for most situations, but an interesting phenomenon to keep in the magic-tricks bag.

[crazydave]

use a small bore solar pond pump I reckon is the easiest and cheapest way. you can make a primitive hand pump out of timber and a leather washer if you have a smooth bore.