Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #01552
To: Jean auBois aubois@trail.com
From: John Mitchell johnm@magnet.com
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 14:45:24 -0500
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: `Green Thumb'
On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Jean auBois wrote:
> I believe that the basic difficulty with this design is being missed here.
> Someone mentioned that it is very difficult to obtain very efficient pumps.
> Someone else mentioned that the only liquid valves that seem to be
> available are these hulking things that take 12 or 24 volts or the like.
>
> It just is hard (energy-wise) to move or regulate the flow of something
> like water.
>
> Just to give you an idea of what the difficulty is, put your finger in
> front of your most active photopopper or photovore. It is rather easy to
> stop it from moving at all, isn't it?
Hmm. One possibility would be an Archimedes Screw Pump. That is, you
have a long rod, with a spiral (helical) trough around the outside,
covered by a tube. Incline the pump at ' or so, with the bottom in water.
Turning the screw makes water travel up the inside of the spiral, over the
top, thence toward your plant. This is mechanically simple.
I dont know if this could be done beam-style, incrementally. Would the
screw try to "unwind" and dump the water if not restrained? I see a few
pumps that appear to be turned by flowing water at its base -- no solar
panels needed?
references:
http://www.thekrib.com/Filters/screw-pump.html
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/pumpglos/archimed.htm
there's bunches more, including engravings from 1511 and many Egyptian
references in the 100BC range.
- j
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