A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners
air lift pump
Ive been trying to come up with a low power idea for moving/pumping water.
This guy explains what i like best so far. The Urban Aquaculture Manual, by Johnathan Woods.
This may be old well known stuff to some here but i thought it may help someone.
Just look it up with a search engine.Its free online.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by HAYDUKE on
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Thanks for the info. Seeing that a mid size air pump uses 3 or 4 watts, as opposed to the ~27 watts my 250gph water pump uses, that seems like a much better option. Would make it easier to power via solar. You got my gears turning now...
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Check out geyser pumps. same thing with one air pump, but geyser pumps are capable of more pressure so they can pump higher up.
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Permalink Reply by Ron on
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I figure i would use two pumps and stones in case one fails.Same with aeration in the fish tank.
Im going to use AC at night with a timer and switch to solar during the day to save power.Its preety sunny here in az most of the time.
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Permalink Reply by Pat James on
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My basic first question for you is, how are you going from solar to AC? Inverters are fairly expensive. or are you planning to use some kind of DC pump?
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Ill either look for a dc pump.Or use an inverter.I have a few laying around. The lower wattage ones dont cost that much.You do have to look at how much power they would use in a standby state.
Right now i have two 6 volt golf cart battery that provide lots of juice.I use them for LED lights and a DC electric fence charger. Ive also used an lawn tractor battery from wallmart with success.
Thinking on it,i could see the sun hitting a panel and providing juice right to an inverter.So with a fuse in place you could skip the battery all together. I also see running fans this way.It would be a matter of sizing up the fan and the solar panel.
If the pump and fans arent drawing to much you might be able to charge a few batterys during the day.And run stuff directly during the day ,then use the battery bank to run the pumps and fans at night.It would be a matter of making sure your not draining down the batterys to much or they wont work well or last.And investing in enough panels and batterys.
It makes sense unless you have a giant hydroponic system.Even then some kind of hybrid setup like this would lower your electric bill. Im no expert but it seems to make sense.
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I was thinking the same thing about running the air pump(s) off ac, inverted from the solar charged batteries. I Would def want it to auto switch to AC when the dc runs low. Electrical engineer I work with says this would be a very simple circuit.
Has anyone heard of anyone having success with airlift/geyser pumps on a decent size system, like maybe a 275 gallon FT? Im not sure it would pump water fast enough to change the water often enough. But maybe use multiple geyser pumps running at the same time?
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Permalink Reply by Bob Campbell on
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeINtTsRgMs&feature=share&li...
HAYDUKE said:Has anyone heard of anyone having success with airlift/geyser pumps on a decent size system, like maybe a 275 gallon FT? Im not sure it would pump water fast enough to change the water often enough. But maybe use multiple geyser pumps running at the same time?
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That video had so much noise i couldnt hear the guy and gave up. Oh and it stopped and wouldnt play for a long time.
But he had a preety good sized tank with fish setup,i dont think there were any plants growing there though.
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I think an timer could be worked out so the ac kicks in when the sun goes down.And kicks back off when the sun comes up.So a long day of free power.
HAYDUKE said:I was thinking the same thing about running the air pump(s) off ac, inverted from the solar charged batteries. I Would def want it to auto switch to AC when the dc runs low. Electrical engineer I work with says this would be a very simple circuit.
Has anyone heard of anyone having success with airlift/geyser pumps on a decent size system, like maybe a 275 gallon FT? Im not sure it would pump water fast enough to change the water often enough. But maybe use multiple geyser pumps running at the same time?
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Hayduke was asking about large systems run by airlift. As long as the lift tube is long enough, and the water does not have to be lifted very high, airlift will circulate plenty of water. Larry's system was more about aquaculture than aquaponics, but he showed his filter with Taro and iris. I think he would be better off with media bed in his large system, but those sponge filters work very well for small tanks where you don't want to grow plants.
Ron said:That video had so much noise i couldnt hear the guy and gave up. Oh and it stopped and wouldnt play for a long time.
But he had a preety good sized tank with fish setup,i dont think there were any plants growing there though.
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Permalink Reply by Vlad Jovanovic on
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Hey guys...Check out section 4.3.5.2 Airlift of this document for how/why/ and under what conditions an airlift will function...and see if you can apply those design ratio's to suit your particular space/needs/desires...(the rest of the doc is quite a good read as well). http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travis/Aquaponics-Design.pdf
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