Hello everyone:


I have designed and built a new creekside/riverside portable mounting platform
for the creek powered irrigation pump, which would also be suitable mounting
platform to hold a prop-type generator in a creek or river. Email me offline,
pentam at shaw dot ca, for photos.


Basically, it is composed of a horizontal 4x4 lumber beam, holding a vertical
(pair) of 2x6's (or 2x8's etc) on a heavy duty 5/8" dia solid stainless
pin/hinge. There is a second pinslot (for a breakable dowel or string). If a
log or something comes downstream, it would hit the vertical members, breaking
the dowel (or string), and enabling the vertical frame (carrying the immersed
creekpump or generator) to swing up, around the stainless pin pivot point,
allowing the floating log to pass underneath freely by, without further damage.
The swing arm would then have to be reset with a new shear pin (or string), but
that is far better than damaging the pump (or generator), or having the entire
mounting platform being swept away!


Regarding the creek powered water (irrigation) pump, a recent test showed it
generates 15-20 psi. I was expecting far more, but the local river has gone
down drastically in the last week, and the geometry of the mount and depth of
the creek (20 inches) was particularly poor. However, it was still able to
pump through 200 feet of garden hose, up 20 vertical feet, and flow at 8
litres/minute (2 gpm). This is still enough to run a small impact sprinkler,
but not impressively so. Perfectly fine for lifting up water from the creek
for trough/ditch irrigation though.


I am waiting for a pump of double the volume (per revolution) arriving any day
now, in order to test. If all goes well, thats the version I'd like to put into
production (and onto ebay). Please email me offline if you have any questions,
or would like to see photos of the portable creekside mounting platform.


cheers
Doug Fortune