WATER: PART ONE.
On Memorial Day Weekend, our friends Sarah and David, with their two lovely kids, came to visit the farm and help with the RAM pump. We had purchased the rest of the pipe required to get it going and needed someone with some expertise in plumbing to help me figure out what in the world I was doing––someone like David who actively wanted to spend his vacation working like crazy.David is not only an engineer professionally, and has been building his own beautiful house, but he possesses a really great mind for these types of projects (if you need an engineer for anything, give him a shout!). I cannot tell you how valuable it was to have him every step of the way. I learned a ridiculous amount.Briefly, to explain how the pump works without electricity, I'm going to adapt an analogy our neighbor's use for their RAM: Pretend you have a room full of water balloons. On one end is a door, on the other is a small, water ballon-sized hole. Now imagine you open that door and quickly add another balloon, slamming the door back before everything falls out (think: closet full of clothing). This new balloon puts enough pressure on the other balloons that it forces a balloon out the other side. Do that seventy times or so a minute and you'll have a fair amount of balloons forced out over time. That's essentially what's going on inside the pump. The water traveling down hill is the person hoarding water balloons. An air tight tank with a check valve is the room. And the water balloon-sized hole is the pipe leading uphill. No electricity required. (If you have a better analogy for how the RAM works, please feel free to tell us!)First we had to clean out the spring and build the dam––which was strangely fun. I even got to carve "J + H" into it––you know, like the pros do. Anyway, in the dam we laid a small bit of PVC which collects water. That water then runs into a 35 gallon reservoir tank we situated a few feet away. From that reservoir tank, there are 77 feet of galvanized pipe that lead downhill to the pump.The water travels down that pipe, gathering the momentum needed to make the pipe function. And really, the first half of the day––from seven to noon––was spent just getting all that ready.(I can write a more detailed rundown of how we did everything if you'd like––and you very well may, who knows––but I'll just give you the gist for now.)I had bought some of the wrong fittings so we ventured back to town to swap them out and finish the project. And by the end of the day, we had the pump working––that is to say, we had the pump pumping water through four hundred feet of pipe, uphill over seventy feet of elevation––all powered by water. Unfortunately, that was as far as we could go, because well, we didn't yet have the holding tank.But we bought one this weekend! So next, all we need is the piping to get it down to the house––thus the "Part One" element of the title––and we will officially have water in the cabin. And it only took two years! Uh, two years so far.But big big thank you to David and Sarah. Couldn't have done it without you! Getting Water: to be continued.... hopefully soon.- Jessehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwGfmrYuXnA
