Hydraulic Ram Pump

In September I was able to take a leave of absence from work and spend a month working with Walter, the new agriculture and environment program coordinator. It felt very good to be back in Honduras! I got to see a lot of old friends, and the looks on peoples faces when I showed up on their doorsteps was priceless. I think many people thought they would never see me again.
Anyway, during this trip we tried out an interesting pump design that uses the flow of water to pump water up a hill.

It is called a hydraulic ram pump. The design I used is from Clemson University. http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm
So, thank you Clemson. I assume since you posted this design info on the internet that it was fair game for me to use.
I did update the design a bit (basically stripped it down of anything not totally necessary to make it cheaper and lighter). One was built and tested here in Minneapolis which I brought with me in an extra suitcase. We built another one in Honduras. The components turned out to be cheaper in Honduras which was a nice surprise. Who knows about the quality, only time will tell.

The basic concept of the pump is to capture a large flow of water going down a decline, convert some of it's momentum into pressure, and use this pressure to pump a smaller portion of the original water up hill to the destination.

Here is a video of it installed in a field of one of the promoters in the community of Nueva Palestina, Patuca.

Here is Omar and his little girl showing the resulting flow of water up the hill in the plot where the group is growing plantains.

I did make up a little training manual in Spanish much of which is just the Clemson material translated.




You can also access the document by clicking here.


I also need to Thank Engineer 775 on Youtube for the video ram pump lessons (1,2, and 3).
Some of the design changes are taken from him as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_WWxWdn5A