How Hydraulic Ram Pumps Are Used

For people living in rural areas or places where a good source of fresh drinking water is readily available, but is not on the high areas of their property, one of the best ways to move it to the top of their site or farm is to use a hydraulic ram pump. This is because this type of pump does not rely on an external energy source, but uses the kinetic energy of water and gravity for lifting the water. The use of hydraulic ram pumps is a more permacultural solution as it does not rely on fossil fuel energy so has a very low ecological cost.

Hydraulic ram pumps have been used for several hundred years and remain popular because:

• They use the force of the water to power them and do not require another power source
• They are very simple with only two moving parts

The way in which they work is they use the momentum of a large amount of water to lift a smaller amount up hill.

For a ram pump to work they require a good source of water above the place where the ram pump is located.

For example, if you have a stream or pond in an uphill area and place the pump, downhill, by allowing water to travel down to the pump through a pipe you can pump water uphill. In the pump there is a valve that lets the water flow and build up speed and energy.

• When the water reaches the right speed it shuts the valve
• When the valve shuts it causes the kinetic energy in the water to transfer to a second valve forcing it open and allows high-pressure water to flow into the delivery pipe
• The delivery pipe has an air chamber which allows it to capture the high pressure water as it compresses during the impulse caused by the shutting of the first valve
• Then the pressure in the pump drops allowing the first valve to reopen and build up the required water pressure again, which in turn causes it to shut and force the second valve to open again
• This cycle is repeated continuously 24/7, although only a small amount of water is transferred each time because it’s a continuous process, a large amount of water can be moved uphill over time

The advantage of using a hydraulic ram pump is they are very robust and have a very long working life. A hydraulic ram pump located 3 meters below the water supply can cope with raising the water in the delivery pipe to 30 meters above the pump with no energy costs.

The disadvantage of this system is that it uses a lot of water to move a relatively small amount of water;typically it pumps only about 10 percent of the water it uses to the required location. The rest of the water is lost as the hydraulic pump builds its needed momentum.

Using a hydraulic ram pump is a very energy efficient, but water wasteful way to move water. It has been used for hundreds of years in large and small applications where water is required in higher elevations than it naturally occurs for agricultural and domestic water supplies