Pumping water using solar

JohnChadwick wrote: »

Going back a bit. But would love to know how to feed water into the Ram Pump properly - like if it's on a stream how do you stop it being clogged with silt etc.

Is there a filter you can use for the 4" Pipe and how do you get a decent flow going through it?

Lu Tze wrote: »

You could try putting in a very basic stilling well, offline from the main stream flow channel so that your not getting much if any deposition on the pipe.

feartuath wrote: »

I gave up on the ram pump in one river but got it to work perfectly in another.
One case there was 3 foot of water in the river flowing slowly.
I used a meter of 4" pipe reduced to 3/4 to try and build up pressure to feed the pump but it was not enough.
You need pressure flowing into the ram pump first then this will in turn pump to a great distance across the field.

I was trying to make it extract from a slow flowing stream.
2nd time a few meters of 3/4 pipe primed with water flowing downhill was enough to get the pump to work.

Used home made wire mesh filter in plastic bottle attached in hydrodare pump work here in the past.

Yes using few different pumps, can be put together for a few hundred depending on how many cattle you need to supply or how far/high you need to pump.

I think it's grant aided in TAMS.

It does my job well anyways. Great pressure at the cattle drinker. I have it close to well. No problems yet apart from batteries, I normally use 2 old car batteries and I would get a year or 2 out of them. Granted the max amount of cattle that would be there at any one time would be 25 stores.

If it's the same requirements as what I have (grazing march to November) Keep it simple. No storage tank needed. March to may & Oct to November cattle will need dam all water as the weather will normally be wetter. This time of the year there is plenty of sun light to keep the solar panels going. A 150 gal + drinker is all you need

thanks for suggestions. I only need it to supply water to a few cattle so was thinking going direct from well to a water trough for a start. Something simple. The well is old. Good clean water though. Can’t say how deep. 20ft maybe. Something to get me out of a corner as currently drawing in water to those fields and it’s a dose.

They'd drink 50 liters a day I'd say, last time we had to draw water to incalf heifers a group of 50 needed two ibcs a day in hot weather

A ibc linked to your existing well and a Ballcock at top to have it filling during day/night , then get fittings for bottom valves and plum in a variable speed wash down pump into it, then plum this into your existing water system, that will drive water no bother to high point of farm, we are pumping water here to higher end of farm over 50 meters of a climb and 1km to furthest trough, if you do get into cows you'll need the wash down pump anyways for the parlour

Using a 5000 litre old milk tank here, it's not actually well feed used to be alright before we put in 2 solar pump systems, it catches the plate cooler water and is fed by the solar pumps during the day to have water to pump during the night to cows/parlour wash-up

Place your ibc wherever is handiest re power-supply/well location and connecting it up to existing water system, the beauty about the vari-speed pump when water troughs are full it shuts of automatically and when water troughs are been emptied it cuts in automatically, has a safety feature if ibc is emptied and no water available to pump it shuts off aswell to stop it burning out