Ram Pump Update (written especially for geeks)

Having been out of commission for weeks while I spent hours on end tinkering with every part of the system in an attempt to isolate the problem, the ram pump is up and running again- and better than ever! First thing that happened was I replaced that bloody 2 gallon pressure tank (my third or fourth in 9 months) with a big beefy one, given to me by awesome neighbors James and Illiana, that sits on the ground and is plumbed in with pex pipe (yeah, I used a pex tool- with Todd's help of course). No more cracks in the pressure tank every other month!

The next thing I did was, having noticed that somehow the delivery line (from the pump to the tank) had been drained (red flag), I re-primed the line using a device that I constructed out of pvc. It allowed me to fill the line from the top using water carried up the mountain without having to climb down into the tank crouching ackwardly to do it.

I shut the valve at the bottom of the delivery line to make sure none of the water I was funneling in from the top was leaking out at the bottom. When the entire 600 ft stretch of pipe was filled, I went back down and opened the valve at the bottom to check for leaking. Sure enough, I detected a hairline crack in the check valve that is supposed to only allow water up the hill, not down. Bingo. Bango. Bongo. I got on the line and wrote to Harry*, the designer and maker of the pump to see if he could send me a new check valve, which he graciously did, and a few days later I retrieved the part from my new stark white mailbox and installed it in a matter of minutes. Works like a charm. That thing is pumping quietly and efficiently. It is a beauty to behold. The spring is giving about 5 or so gallons a minute these days, maybe a little more when it rains a lot, and the pump is pumping 40 gallons an hour up to the tank. The rest of the water splashes back into the branch where it supports a plethora of aquatic life, from salamanders to crawdaddies, to little water snails and a variety of water loving plants like jewelweed and green headed coneflower (sochan).

The only thing is, the day I fixed the pump, the line that carries water from the storage tank on the hill to the house developed a mysterious leak. This line is completely unrelated to the pump or the delivery line to the tank. Major coincidence. Sucky coincidence. And it also coincided with me coming down with a funky summer cold, which is just a side note, but I don't have loads of energy to go digging around hundreds of feet of pipe for the leak.

Following a brilliant brainstorm of my dear neighbor Todd, I devised a plug with a wine carboy stopper to stop up the pipe that is leaking. I am allowing the tank to fill up and then I am going to pull the plug and release the 600 gallons of water, hoping that a flood with show up in the spot where the leak is. Is is suspected by some that the leak is likely in the bulkhead fitting that connects the tank to the pipe down. We will see. Today is the day. Today is the day. Maybe by this weekend I'll be cutting on faucets and flushing commodes and washing the mountain of laundry that has accumulated. And my neck will get a break from the strain of carrying water up the hill to the house. But hoping is a gamble, so I'm just going to ride this one out and see.

* Click Harry's name to get a full description and lots of photos of the pump. If you're a physics or mechanical geek you might really like this...