Pumping Water

[cetryn]

I'm writing a story that takes place in a mountain cabin that's off the grid. I was wondering if it is possible to get water into a "normal" faucet without the use of a powered pump. I'm not sure if you could get enough water pressure built up with some sort of hand-primed well that would allow you to use your kitchen sink the modern way.

My main character is a bit of a city girl, and she's learning the ropes, but I wasn't sure just how easy I could make her life initially (there's still a hand pump outside the cabin).

Also, is there often much of a problem with the pipes on a hand pump freezing during the winters? Is there a good way to winterize them?

 

[Marianne]

I don't have any answers for you, just wanted to welcome you!!

 

[Leta]

Yes. Well, I don't know how "normal" the faucet would be, but you can get water to a tap without electricity.

I live in a small city. Even when the water goes out, we have water, because the city water is all gravity fed. On a hill, above all the houses, is the water tower. Except it isn't really a water tower, it's a gigantic cistern on a hill. The filtered, treated water gets put in the cistern (rather than collected rainwater, for example) via something called the Venturi effect.

This is a very, very old system. This is what they used to get running water in ancient Greece and Rome, and in castles. The major difference between this system and current sewage systems is that we have flush toilets now. In the old days, they separated greywater from human waste, and the two were dealt with very differently. Now, they all go to the same place.

On a small, cabin-in-the-woods scale, if it were me, I'd have a big cistern with some type of lid, probably on legs, higher up than my house. I'd have it hooked up so that it passed through a filter (or filters) first, as well as some type of hot water heater (solar for summer, wood for winter, propane for backup, probably). I'd take the lid off to let it fill with rain, and put the lid on to protect it from contaminants once it was full. Depending on the climate, I might fill it with snow during the winter.

You can also move water with a non-electric pump that's powered by a windmill. Have you ever seen those accordion-looking hand pumps that you use to pump a stability ball? Or an old fashioned fireplace bellows? Those are non-electric pumps. If you can picture it, a big giant one of these in/on a well, being pushed- well, pumped- by the motion of the spinning windmill. The reason that the Netherlands is known for windmills isn't because of grain (which, technically, is what a windMILL actually does, uses wind to move giant stones to mill grain into flour), it is because the Netherlands is one of the European low countries- it's swampy. So the Dutch built windpumps to keep water out of buildings so they'd last.

 

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[dragonlaurel]

Using a spring makes sense. Ram pumps are ancient too, so they could be used to transport water to further spots.

 

[Beekissed]

DL, great minds think alike!

A hydraulic ram, or hydram, is a cyclic water pump powered by hydropower. It functions as a hydraulic transformer that takes in water at one "hydraulic head" (pressure) and flow-rate, and outputs water at a higher hydraulic-head and lower flow-rate. The device uses the water hammer effect to develop pressure that allows a portion of the input water that powers the pump to be lifted to a point higher than where the water originally started. The hydraulic ram is sometimes used in remote areas, where there is both a source of low-head hydropower, and a need for pumping water to a destination higher in elevation than the source. In this situation, the ram is often useful, since it requires no outside source of power other than the kinetic energy of water.

 

[cetryn]

Thanks guys! I knew there had to be something. I'll probably go with either the cistern or windmill idea since they seem the simplest.

I knew about gas pumps, but since this story will be taking place over several years without any outside contact, fossil fuels are kind of out of the question (although I suppose I could have them make veggie diesel....might be a bit of a stretch...)