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We live in the suburbs of Sydney and are collecting rain water in olive barrells stored down the side of the house and connected by a series of siphoning hoses. We had been bailing the water from the last barrell into the top load washing machine to do each wash.
Recently the old machine died and we now have a front loader which requires 50kpa of water pressure to operate. One possiblity is to put a very small header tank (small olive barrell) in the roof. 5 meteres above the intake to the new machine.
Any ideas about how to trickle the water up there. A wind mill? a solar powered trickle pump.
dwyer Guru Joined: 19/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 574
Posted: 10:35am 03 Mar 2008
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Hi
You said that your old washing machine die is F&P brand? maybe you able to try use this pump or other way is buy household water pump with pressure switch on is more suitlable for your front loader this way save all the hassle
dwyer the bushman
oztules Guru Joined: 26/07/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1686
Something like this may even fit inside the washing machine interior with a small battery charger (kmart type thing) to run it. Yes the little charger (4A or so )will be a little underpowered, perhaps some large caps will help a bit too, but the cycle time will be low. It may fit inside as well.
It will also self prime from your olive barrels and has pressure switches built in to stop / start with the washing/rinse cycles. Thermal o/load included.. neat little package.
Or a small sla battery that you charge once a week or so.
Just a thought to keep it simple and neat.
(The ones I used to build into floor scrubbing machines lasted surprisingly well.... 3-4 years 1-3 hrs/day)
.....oztulesVillage idiot...or... just another hack out of his depth
oztules Guru Joined: 26/07/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1686
Posted: 12:03pm 03 Mar 2008
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Afterthought....
If you go this way, and find the pump cycles while filling (washing machine cant keep up with supply so pump has to keep on turning off/on/off/on while filling......) a restrictor on the inlet hose so they match flow rates will stop it from cycling/pulsating.
This can be as simple a a hose clamp on the pump inlet hose that you do up until you strangle the inflow sufficiently ..... crude but works well
.........oztulesVillage idiot...or... just another hack out of his depth
petanque don Senior Member Joined: 02/08/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 212
Posted: 12:01am 04 Mar 2008
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Would some sort of manual or electric bilge pump (as used in boats) be worth considering?
Even manual would be a lot easier than buckets
Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904
Posted: 02:39pm 04 Mar 2008
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Forget about electric bilge pumps, they are rated for a zero (yes, zero!) head. Try to get them to pump higher than a metre or so then their output drops off rapidly. You need quite an expensive electric bilge pump to lift water more than 3 meters at a noticable flow rate.
Manual diaphragm type pumps is what you are looking for if you want to use a boat pump. Use a smallish output hose so that the lifted water column is not too heavy.
Bilge pumps are meant to shift lots of water a little height, you want little water lifted up a big height.
Or, another idea, if you could apply air pressure to your water tanks then an output hose would lift the water to the roof without you having to pump any water.
Tinker Klaus
grolly Regular Member Joined: 19/05/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 62
Posted: 11:19am 28 Mar 2008
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I have a 24 volt preasure pump running the whole house, shower, hot water, and front loading washing machine, cost $470.00 runs off 12 x 2 volt 500 Ah batteries, charged by a wind gen, scaled down for your use, 12 volt submersable bilge pump will pump 2500 gph at a head of 3 mt, ( had one or two in the boats I skippered), even halfing that for 5 mt head, still a bit of water moved, large car battery and a f&p wind gen to charge it. I have bought the farm...now I AM powering it...
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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