Reasearch notes for pedel power and kenetic energy
Pedal Powered Water Pump | |
| For a while now I've been wanting a human powered alternative to the electric pump I use to move water between rainwater tanks. It just seems silly to use electricity instead of pedal power. So I plotted out this idea and built it to see what happened. | |
| I bought a drill pump based on this really primitive idea and had a quick bash using my battery drill to make sure that it would work at low rpm. It's designed to run at 3000rpm, the batter drill does 500-ish in slow mode and that pumped water. So I started building. | |
 | The Plan! |
 | Stage one - a shaft, two self aligning bearings with the pump on one end and a thread to take a bicycle gear on the other. |
 | The first step was getting a friend to drill a 7mm hole for the pump shaft in the end of the 20mm shaft and tap an M6 hole into that, then weld an old bottom bracket shell on the other end. |
 | File a flat onto the pump shaft to make it less likely to slip. |
 | Screw a second hand freewheel onto the BB shell (conveniently they both use the same unusual thread) |
 | Stage two - Modelling the parts (note the random scrap holding the shaft up). Yup, it's built out of junk from my scrap bin. |
 | Much welding, drilling and faffing later and it's test assembly time. Then cut chunks off to get the derailleur installed where it can work. |
 | Note that it's mounted coaxial with the shaft and much as it would be on a bicycle - this is necessary so that shifting works properly. I want gears so that if I guess wrong about the resistance I can always change down and pump more slowly. |
 | Fully assembled and the worst of the sharp edges taken off with the grinder |
 | Bike installed (derailler taken off bike, chain slipped through gap between freewheel and plate) |
 | Note the chain installing slot on the right |
 | And the wrong size stainless steel bolts holding the bike. Off to the bolt shop tomorrow. Also need plumbing parts. |
 | Pumping! As I feared it's ridiculously easy to pedal (I can spin it with my hand) but speed is dismal. Pedalling at 100rpm with a 3.5:1 gear is not really enough. I need to add a 10:1 gear up stage to make it work properly. |
 | But I still managed to put ~80 litres into that tank in 10 minutes pedalling. I could carry buckets up a ladder that fast, but at least it works well enough for me to feel ok spending money improving it. |
| The next stage is to find a way to get higher gearing. I think I'll weld a step-through bike to the stand and add an extra chain stage to it with another axle behind the seat. That should give me a better range of seat heights than I have now (kids bike... very short) as well as better gearing. | |
| The alternative is to cobble up some kind of recumbent or semi-recumbent seating for it. That will be more comfortable and not a heap bigger because the oriinal plan of just bolting any random bike to it doesn't seem likely to be practical. It's not impossible, it's just that removing the rear derailleur to get the bike in and having the shifter for the derailleur on the wee stand at the back could get annoying. I will try to keep the pump stand bit removable in case people want to use it that way. | |
| Back-of-the-envelope plan for the recumbent option (envelope guaranteed 100% BOC gas bill): | |
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| Top left we see my simple all-in-a-line layout with plan view next to it. All perfect except for the pedalling backwards part. Bah! | |
| By flipping the second chainring to the other side pedalling works and it may even be more compact, albeit mildly interesting to align. Again, plan view to the left. I think it'll work. If I can get a 50T or bigger chainring that should give me 4:1, plus the 3.5:1 I already have is about 14:1 overall, so I'll be in the 1500-ish rpm range that I want. If I can scrounge a slightly used racing chainring from http://trisled.com.au/ that would be even better but there's no way I'm buying a new 90T chainring ($$$) | |
I have researched alliterative forms of energy for the water feature installation, as an example I looked into solar power, wind power, and other power sources which all proved to be to costly to fund for the project.
I decided on peddle power and hand pump to use to generate the energy required to lift the water form its pond up and around the feature back to its source I have also looked at kinetic energy as this is yet another form of producing the energy required to lift the water, it has also been suggested that the installation is a type of a kinetic sculpture as it uses alternate forms of energy to produce the power required for the water feature to work.
Below are a selection of images depicting Land/Earth Art, by various Artists who have inspired the way I work incorporating Land/Earth Art with alternative energy sources incorporated into my installations, make them Public interactive. These images show how one can change the surrounding landscape by either placing on to or by incorporating the earth's natural materials into various constructions and sculptures.
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Land/Earth Art Bournville taken from my own observations
During my research I bought a book by Guiseppe Pennone, which accompioned his exhibition at the Take Gallery, London, which I visited whilst doing research for the installation feature.
Through visiting libaries in Nuneaton, Coventry, Birmingham and London I have looked in various books and photocopied various images as seen above, including photos that I took of my own work ( see wrapped boulder images above) in comparision with Christon Javacheff as an example of land/earth art.
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