"Stream Power" Drives his Home-Built Paddle Pump

"Stream Power" Drives his Home-Built Paddle Pump MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Pumps 26-6-25 In the summer, the main source of water for the 250 plus head of registered Angus cows owned by Orrin Hart and Sons is the creek that flows through their Willabar Ranch near Claresholm, Alberta. The Harts have a permit to water their cattle from the creek, but they're not thrilled about running cattle to the creek to drink. "Allowing cattle in the creek pollutes it. It also requires special fencing and maintaining those fences is difficult, since the creek floods occasionally. It's better all around if we can keep the cattle away from it," Orrin says. Hart has a reputation for using alternative energy wherever he can. In fact, he lives in a solar house, so he hasn't paid a heating bill for 17 years. "We also heat our machine shed with solar panels and generate our own electricity with windmills," he says. Hart devised a system that uses the power of the flowing water to pump water from the creek to drinking troughs in the adjacent pastures. He's been perfecting what he calls a "floating paddle pump" for several years and thinks his newest version finally has the right combination of paddlewheel design, pump and flotation. The paddle part of Hart's pump is made from a cylinder he salvaged from an old combine. He converted the 5-ft. wide cylinder into a large paddle wheel by removing the rub bars and mounting strap iron brackets in their place, bent at an angle. Then he attached strips of heavy corrugated fiberglass roofing sheets to the strap iron braces to make the paddles. The paddle wheel direct drives using a roller chain instead of a belt. "Belts slip when they get wet and since the paddles tend to throw water, a chain works better," he says. "The pump we use is designed to pump about 8 gal. per minute running at 500 to 600 rpm's. But the pump runs at only 80 to 100 rpm's when powered by the paddle wheel so it moves only about a gallon a minute. That's more than enough for our needs, though, since it's pumping 24 hours a day," Hart says. The paddle and pump mount on a skid made of 4 by 4-in. treated wood, with pontoons made of 10-in. dia. PVC pipe, cut 11 ft. long and sealed with end caps. "I glue the end caps in place with PVC cement, and then run a bead of silicone glue around the seam, too. Even a little leak will eventually allow the pontoon to fill with water," he says. "The pontoons give it about 600 lbs. of flotation, but the unit weighs only about 300 lbs. so the pump is very buoyant." He uses a front-end loader with a fork to set the paddle pump into the creek after the ice goes out in the spring and anchors it with a cable fastened to both rear corners. Hart's paddle pump pushes water 850 ft. through a 1-in. buried pipe to a reservoir tank about 850 ft. away from the creek. The tank, made of an old industrial tire mounted on a concrete base, holds 800 gal. of water. It supplies water by gravity flow to three drinking tanks in different pastures, also made of industrial tires set on concrete. Since the paddle pump runs 24 hours a day, it pumps more water than the tank will hold at times. Overflow from the reservoir tank runs through a drain pipe back into the creek. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Orrin Hart, Box 578, Claresholm, Alberta, Canada T0L 0T0 (ph 403 625-2127; fax 403 625-2280).

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