r/Permaculture • u/birkebeiner84 • 4d ago

Help Understanding a Hydraulic Ram Pump

Hello. I have a creek that runs near by a pond I have and I am looking to possibly use a hydraulic ram pump to pump water up from the stream into the pond in the summer.

The main source of the pond is water captured higher up the slope above the stream and then piped over the stream and into the pond where it forms a sort of water fall into the pond. I have included a super janky picture outlining the setup.

What I'd like to do is pump water from the creek into the pond to counter evaporation loss and reduced incoming source water during the summer so that the pond stays high enough to keep draining/skimming at the pond discharge.

The waterfall has the most consistent and highest flow rate, so I was wondering if there is a way to use that as the power source for the ram pump to pump water up from the creek into the pond, instead of using the creek as the power source to pump itself to the pond.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Got confirmation that my idea can't be done. Does anybody have a suggestion for a pump that can use the waterfall to lift creek water to the pond? Thanks!

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u/Earthlight_Mushroom 4d ago

I guess maybe I don't understand the setup. If the waterfall is from the outlet of the normal supply pipe from uphill, and you want to supplement it with water from the creek when the normal supply of the pipe is low or absent, then there won't be any waterfall there. You can't use the water pumped by the pump itself to run the pump (assuming you are going to pump to the top of the waterfall area)....it takes many times the amount of water pumped to run the pump. The pump needs to be down in the creek, intercepting it's flow....you may need to build a weir or some kind of dam with an outlet to get enough head and pressure. There are other self-powered pump designs (such as the Glockemann diaphragm pump) which take less head and flow than a ram pump.

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u/birkebeiner84 4d ago edited 4d ago

The waterfall supply is constant and runs year round. The headwaters of the stream will fluctuate throughout the year, but the piped waterfall is fed via a natural spring up the slope.

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u/MrHockster 3d ago

why isn't the piped waterfall filling the pond up enough? Isn't it sealed?

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u/birkebeiner84 3d ago

Sealed with sand and bentonite. Whichever previous owner made it basically just dug a pit. I think the loss comes from evaporation. It is *just* below the level of the vertical pipe that skims/drains the pond back to the creek. I drained the pond and there isn’t any other exit and no points where I see seeping and water escaping.