Bell siphon pump for a sluice

[just starting]

This is a project i have been working on for the past week .

I finally started building it yesterday and modified it today .

It`s a bell siphon pump in a 10 litre square bucket on legs. Yeah , i know. I am trying not to laugh ,too.

What i am trying to achieve is a working bell siphon pump to run water to my sluice when the water in the creek is fairly low or not flowing at all,but there is still water in it , with the bucket partly or fully submerged in the water . I want a continuous flow of water from the bucket to a drip / spray pipe on the sluice using physics to do the job and not by mechanical or electrical means.

Will it work or is this the wrong type of pump to do it ? I looked at ram pumps, but they looked like they had too many parts for a small project like this and all the youtube videos had very complicated set ups. So far it has cost me next to nothing ,with most of the materials i had lying around in the shed.

I don`t know the first thing about plumbing and want to gauge the opinions of people who may have done this or know if this will work or not.

What i have done is run a 1 inch pvc pipe through the bottom of the bucket and around to the front of it at about 4 inches up the bucket with an outlet to attach a hose . The pvc pipe sits up about 6 inches into the bucket with a small funnel on top of it and then there is the bell which sits over that ,which is just a water bottle with some holes cut out at the bottom to let the water in.It appears that the more space inside the top of the bottle ,the more water volume that comes out of the outlet pipe.Do i need a bigger bottle to create a bigger air space ?Do i have the pvc pipe too high or should i cut it lower ?
Not all of the connections are glued tight ,yet ,so i can adjust stuff if i need to.

On testing it briefly tonight before i got rained out , the water flow seemed reasonable enough without having a hose hooked up to a drip / spray bar on the sluice ,yet.

Am i doing this right or wasting my time ?

Any thoughts, please ?

If this fails , i have another experiment to try to do the same job that doesn`t involve any powered or mechanical devices.

Thanks.

 

[junkdog]

Bell siphon is a suction type . it wont pump up hill. have a look at a bunyip pump if there is a flow in the stream .

 

[just starting]

Thanks, Junkdog. Very interesting. Still needs gravity to feed it ,but i like the idea. Do you know what price they start from ,please ? I couldn`t find a price anywhere.

Cheers.
FOZ

 

[Ned]

Why don't you try using a toilet cisten (plastic) as the water compartment and after the water slowly fills, press the button for full flush. then you would have changed a trickle into a flush to wash the gravel?
Maybe a silly idea - who knows untill it is given a try!
regards, Ned

 

[just starting]

That`s sort of what i am trying to do ,but without all the mechanisms. I recon you only need to get the siphon to create a vacuum once and it should flow continuously from there on in.
I have modified it once more today and will test it again tomorrow if the weather holds off .

Thanks.

 

[junkdog]

Thanks, Junkdog. Very interesting. Still needs gravity to feed it ,but i like the idea. Do you know what price they start from ,please ? I couldn`t find a price anywhere.

Cheers.
FOZ

They cost around $250 .