Here we go...the madness of Jack ensues...

I was looking at different ways to generate power recently and was thinking of utilizing a small stream on my neighbor's property. Its a very small stream so the power from it might be quite small. I figure it does somewhere around 200 gph.

Very small.

But...water and gravity together could make something interesting.

I was looking at various ways of damming and collecting and looking at a lot of low power options. I studied the Pelton generators and the various homebrewed ideas that folks had tried. Some of these were quite good and I learned a lot. Most of the motor studies came from the windpower crowd, but some were good for water as well. I think I could build a stator and generator now if I wanted. The Internet is a wonderful tool.

So the problem is this. I have a stream that has SOME flow, but no head and no probable way to dam it. I need a way to convert a slow flow to sometype of HP. In my travels I ran across a very obscure reference to a "coil pump" which I filed away and came back to a few days later. Later I would be jogged into it by my staring at a Nautilus shell trying to determine if there was something about the design I could use. That shape would eventually lead me to a French treatise on water pumps and the design I saw.

This is the picture.
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I'm glad I followed it.

See how it follows the shell design of a Nautilus?

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Insanity ensued as I realized that I could use this to stage my generator in a very odd way. So I went home and drew some sketches and played with the idea. Last night I built a prototype. Using a 2 liter plastic bottle, some vinyl tube and a piece of PVC pipe. I was highly skeptical but I was very happy 45 minutes later when I saw it work.

So some ideas started coming together. I have a kiddie pool, a pump that will move 170 GPH and a burning desire to see how much electricity I can squeeze out of such a little stream.

The first stages will be done outside my door in a 6 foot kiddie pool. Im going to use the 170 gph flow as a constant for the design.

This is my goal:
To make an easy to build generator design that can be reproduced by folks cheaply and easily.

Its a bit of a pipe dream but I think it's worth pursueing. I may just go back to a standard waterwheel, but the coil pump holds a good deal of fascination for me. The concept is dead simple and the construction is so basic a 5 year old could do it.

More to come as I work out the details.

A few more thoughts about this little venture...

You cant get blood from a stone. There will be a limited amount of energy to be had, less conversion losses.
( yes, even LL members are bound by the Laws of Conservation of Energy..)

The simplest way might be the easiest. I may return to a simple waterwheel and focus on other things.

There is a reason these coil pumps arent in huge use. I need to find out why.
LoTek? Too simple? Not efficient?

The conversion process would take pressurized water and use it to run a high speed mini-gen. Would the water conversion be more or less efficient than actually gearing the motor to higher revs? Since I am still using a quantified amount of energy ( gravity) , which would be better? I assume that the answer would lie in the matching of the generator to the waterflow.

Basically this process will create head from flow, so how much is lost in the conversion process?
Is it more or less than gearing reductions? I know that the compression of the air pockets is the prime factor. Since air loses very little energy when decompressing, it SHOULD be more efficient. But I could be wrong.

All in all, this is a very interesting project for me.

So many questions.

Some rude pictures of my current experiment.

2 Liter Plastic bottle with about 7 feet of 3/8 inch tube. Very high friction loss...but you can see the areas where the water collects...
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This is me turnning the PVC pipe with my right hand, no bearings and no guides, just dipping it in the water. The end of the pipe has a piece of the Vinyl pipe stuck in it to give it a 3/4 reduction, which should result in a trickle...but check it out...and this is a weak one...

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That, BTW, was me turning the shaft about 290 degrees every 2 seconds... I also added a very small "scoop" to get a little more water in the tubes during the submersion. This SHOULD add a little more compression to the water. I also guestimate that its not a 3/4 reduction but more like 2/3 or slightly over 1/2.
This thing is capable of shooting a stream of water over 15 inches.

My thoughts on this? Well Im thinking 2 or 3 of these in circuit to even out the pulses and I could have a very effective pump to push into a small multivane generator...

Then again...I could just direct drive the motor and build the wheel larger. They say these can lift water quite high and Im also toying with the idea of a standing water tower. 10 foot PVC with a pressure valve at the bottom could make for some very consistent pressure and not have to worry about the pulse effect.

Last night I had a brainstorm. I figured out how to make a multi adjustable wheel that can change the size, depth and pitch of its containers. Gotta finnesse the design. I also checked the stream again and I think I may be off in my flow rate. Its probably double what I thought it was. Nice. May be some HP there to harvest after all, but I will probably end up digging a pool.

This is a very quick and basic CAD drawing of the wheel design. The Red lines are made of a flexible material like a stiff pliable plastic or even stainless steel. Secured to the inner hub by piano type hinge, the wheel can be popped open, the dividers can be redistibuted and the wheel closed. I plan on using a neoprene type material and a little pressure to hold the dividers in place and reduce leakage.

The drawing shows two different positions of one divider. I think the thinner more graceful curve will lend itself to more of a turbine type action while the deeper one will serve closer to a traditional waterwheel utilizing more gravity and less flow.

The one on the left will take large amounts of flow with head to create a more turbine like effect. You can also see that the curve will utilize the effect of the chamber filling to push forward and also to use the draining of the chamber to give it even more push. This will lend itself to more induction motors and less gearing to adjust. The one on the right will use less flow and head but keep the water in the system longer, thus creating a more torqy effect. Slower but stronger.

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As far as I can tell, no one has ever made anything like this.

This is an interesting little thread you have here Jack. The first question that comes to my mind is, what is it that you are trying to power or what power output levels are you trying to achieve?

I am looking to see what I can do with what I have. I am happiest when I am building or inventing. But being able to do something that makes me happy and could possibly benefit other people, makes it even better. We are going to start small and see just how much energy I can wring out of that little brook.

While on the subject of unusual water pumps, check out the Pulser Pump with no moving parts. It won't work for you since it needs some head but the physics is fun to think about.

I will be following this thread with much interest as my parents now live in an old watermill.
Despite being converted for living the wheel housing is still intact under the house with the stream running through it .
For a while now we have been considering retrofitting a wheel and generator to part power the house.

depending on the size and condition of the water wheel, you should be able to not only power your house, but sell some back to the Grid for extra money.

Well...you know that thing cats do with their tail when they are conflicted? Thats what Im doing right now.

Long story short. We brought a kitten home for my youngest who was abandoned, she let her outside within 20 minutes of her getting into the house, so I spent the rainiest Sunday ever tramping through the woods looking for said cat. My shoes are still wet.

While looking for "Tricksie" I came across the upper portion of the stream on my neighbors property...falling down through a cleft in the rocks and easily managing a 50-75 foot head in less than 40 linear feet. Its like frickin heaven. This section would be so easy to harvest its not even funny, but thats not what I set out to do. I wanted to created a low head system that would be more applicable to the majority of folks with streams on their land. But the temptation is definitely there.

I will see if I can get some pictures to show you all what I mean.

In the meantime I want to go look at the history on the land and see if I can determine when someone tried to build an earth dam on the stream. There is a section that looks like it was a dam at one point and it has 18 inches of topsoil on top of it. Along with several 4-8 inch trees, so it's been there a while.

The problem is that this spot is 500 feet from my house and its not easy to get to.

But thats never stopped me before.

Well we went hunting for the kitty again, but this time I took the camera...

So let me show you a micro-hydro fantasy...Im going to save the best for last.

This is the low head section of the stream which lies just below this cool waterfall section. Very low head but a cumulative flow typical of small streams in VT...

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This is what lies above it. Its actually quite beautiful.

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If you climb the whole 75 feet up the stream, WHICH WE DID! This is the view from above. My five year old, being the adventurous little thing that she is, boldly tramped away with us all the way to the top. Sure we could have actually gone around and up the bank...but what fun would that be?

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But the real surprise was the next shot. Totally unexpected.

One of the most beautiful spots I have seen in a while.

It reminds me of the Fountain of Youth...Naturally I would never dream of touching this with a hydro setup.

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Oh! and I ran into my neighbor and asked if she minded us "playing in the stream". She said "Sure go ahead."

So Im hoping to play a little bit...

I think you should open a casino on the spot.

Maybe a drive in...I love tarmac...

Looks like a good spot for a porn movie too... ( Bonk chica bonk, chica wowow! )
All I need is a good plot and some camera equipment...well some camera equipment anyway.

Althought the casino idea bears looking into. I always try to honor my heritage by establishing non taxable monuments to greed and desecration. Honestly, what could make my ancestors more proud than seeing me and my clan strip a busload of grannies from their hard earned fixed incomes?


PS. The cat came back last night. She is "getting used to the house" right now.

See, now if it was my heritage I'd build a church for the exact same reasons.

Hmmmm...Yeah.

I just put in an application to break ground for "Captain Samuraijack's Surf, Turf, Lobster, Casino, Deli and Massage Parlor"
( I'm still waiting on the dry cleaning...)

Im basing it on persecution from the Romans.
I think I stand a good chance considering the state of the Italian Parliment these days...

Good one. Though for me, making porn is not dependent on camera equipment being present.


...left off "Church of the Redeemer" and (some)"Assembly of God"(required).

Now my heritage would dictate that I build a still and take advantage of the cold flowing water to cool the condenser screw. My family made a fortune doing rum running during prohibition. You Americans sure are a thirsty lot. I attribute that fact to the lack of good beer.

I saw this is PopSci today and thought it might inspire you so I took a pic of it:

300,000 gallons per second, about the same as your stream.

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where's the fish ladder?

More work on the wheel last night but mostly just me trying to find the right material for it. Im trying to be cheap so its easy to make, but the first one might have to contain some odd materials. I need some thin flexible plastic but I dont seem to have any and niether does our hardware store. Sure I could build it out of lucite but at 4.99 a sf, thats a really expensive prototype. Tried some tin sheet last night and some recycled plastic. They both didnt really do what I wanted.

Neo magnets are also expensive, but I think I may be able to salvage some from a few spare hard drives.

It's been raining cats and dogs here so getting a good measure of the stream flow has been "iffy" at best. I think I may have gotten it right with the first estimate.

I'm not completely certain what you want the "thin flexible plastic" for, but the first thing that came to my mind when I read this was plastic venetian blinds. I don't know if that sounds feasible, though.

Nope. The design calls for a flexible strip about 18 inches long that can bend both ways and return to true or close to it and also withstand the pressure of the holder circles. I think for the meantime, I can use the plastic they use to cover lights in suspended ceilings.

Just a quick note. I mentioned my convertable turbine to a few people and got mixed replys on if my company wanted to help me patent it. End result?
I just found out my company DOES have a power development branch.
They want to see the plans.

Well, you could hear the laughter all the way from TX...oh well. Apparently my idea is NOT "High Profile" enough...

So the fun continues. We are purposely staying away from the mossy areas, mostly because its so delicate and it looks so neat. Took a long time to develop that, so Im not going to disrupt it.
I spent the past week looking at the brook to determine if I was going to misplace any fish in the process. Then I realized that a tree falling in the stream would have more impact than our plans. So I stopped worrying too much about fish...
( I like to think of myself as a "Practical Naturalist"....well.."semi-practical". If it comes down to the snail darter or me...Im going to pick me. Snail darters are really good kippered with crackers anyway.)

Some nice person was nice enough to leave a piece of schedule 30 on the woods...hehehe..."Waste not, Want not."
(...and also the main reason my shop looks like the set of "Sanford and Son".)

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Capitalizing on this great find, my youngest and I proceed to build a very limited weir to test water flow.
Pretty bad, but we got what we wanted. Full flow at 12 inches of head.

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This is the small weir and download pipe into a quick pool we used the leaf suspension method to make. Thats where you build a loose rock wall and then throw a ton of leaves in and it slowly seals all the holes. I learned it as a kid...just really handy.

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This is a shot of the pool and the water at full flow. I daresay this could easily be made into something to make a reasonable amount of energy with. If I gave into the temptation to use the head, I would be building a pelton right now. Bzzzzzzzz!

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One of the questions I got from the design team today was "What are you going to do with this?"

Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to try to make a light small generator that can be built from spare parts that can maybe power a radio or a cell phone or maybe even a laptop. Maybe something to go hand in hand with the laptop for every child program. Not really sure. Maybe I'll just let it sit here and let people steal ideas from it. I would just like to build something to help people. If I had actually been approached with patenting, I would have named it a Caitlin Convertible Turbine.
After my sister, a philanthropist in her own right.

Have you checked Turgo wheels/turbines? I think they might be more efficient than Peltons, although I have nothing to back this up with.

It really depends on what your situation is. In GENERAL terms the Turgo design is more forgiving in heads that range from 30 to about 300 feet. Which is quite a range if you think about it. The Pelton's are designed for higher heads and more water pressure, but they have to be carefully controlled because too much water into the wheel will cause a loss of power as the water leaving the 'Spoons" starts to interfere with the incoming jets. The Turgo doesnt have this problem as it is jetted from an angle and the water is expected to exit the other side. Overall, the amount of control you need to exercise over the device will be its limiting factor. The main advantage to the Turgo is its forgiveness.

For this application we dont really have enough head from the stream. We COULD if I wanted to run a few hundred feet of hose, but thats not my goal. I wont harvest this stream unless it was actually mine. But what I am trying to do is get the most out of a very low head system, which represents about 80% of the streams in North America.

Make no mistake, If I wanted to, I could mount a traditional Francis in a sluice and extract a few hundred watts AC an hour, but once again, thats not what Im looking for.

For this application I am going to use a modified Banki Turbine, which I am going to call a "Caitlin Wheel".
Its an attempt to get the best characteristics of a Banki and a traditional water wheel.

If my limited knowledge of water means anything the difference will be a slightly torque-y version of a Banki with a different entrance point and a longer draw on the gravity of the wheel, combined with a longer exit thrust from the exiting water. The water flow will have to be controlled more than a Banki, however.

More to come. I also REALLY want to play with the coil pump idea. Its such a neat old tech that Im dying to try it with something newer. I was toying with the idea of using the pump to create a higher head and then using a turbine that can do water and air. Could be pretty neat.

Well, like I said, I had nothing to back that up with. I've been looking at alternative energy to get me off the grid, but I don't have a water source. I've come across the Turgo a few times in my research, but never looked into it in depth for lack of application. Never heard of a Banki turbine, so I'm going to look that one up!

Do you have any type of water source? Even a stream or shallow river? I have a few ideas to try out if you do...
( wiggle your whiskers and say "Squeek"! )


So the construction of the hybrid Caitlin wheel began . I knew I would run into trouble since I opted to use a thicker plexiglass.
Anyway..here is the basic construction....


A wheel with the glass pieces attached to the haft...

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Like So. The four tines would be bent inward and secured. The pressure of the tines would keep them in a shape I desired for the trough of the the wheel/turbine

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Well...ot worked the first few times...I guess this just means it would have cracked as soon as it got too cold. I might be able to use this in a larger wheel, but it looks like the material is too brittle. Im am now looking for an industrial grade plastic. Something about the thickness of food grade plastic buckets.

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The girls were bummed. They wanted to go play in the stream as well...






A banki turbine is actually a neat device. It maintains its constant velocity over a large variation of flow rates. Its said to have an 80% efficiency. I will do a write up on them soon.

Nope, other than a well, but pumping the water to generate electricity kind defeats the object. (Although there are some large scale hydro plants that do just that.)


How is that efficient? At first glance you would think that the greater energy of a large flow would be wasted if its only turning the turbine at the same velocity of a small flow, which isn't to say that a greater velocity is necessarily more efficient. You've piqued my interest!

Banki design implements an impulse turbine by using a wide flat nozzle to feed the turbine, which creates a difference in pressure. Water also acts on the banki in two ways. The first is the entry into the wheel and the second is the exit from the wheel. So if the water has a good deal of head to it, it swings more towards the side of using the impulse side of things, but if the head drops down then the gravity reaction on the vanes from the entrance and exit compensates ( a reasonable amount) for the lack of head. With lower heads there is more reaction to compensate for the lack of impulse. Pelton wheels are driven purely by impulse so variations in head will affect their performance. So if you had a generator that needed 300-400 RPM and you had a low head with a variable flow, you could do it with a Banki. In that way the Banki would be more "efficient" at giving you a more constant rpm.

When I was referring to it being more efficient I was speaking in terms of how well it adapted to changing conditions. If you are talking efficiency in terms of purely harvesting energy then you have to look at other models and actually tune them to your site. I think the Francis and Peltons are among the most efficent in terms of harnessing electricity from constant flows. I would have to go back and look.

Mine is a cross between that should capitalize on the heavier gravity constant due to the formation of the chambers...I think.

I just figured out what type of plastic I need. Remember those roll up plastic sleds we used to use when we were young? THATS what I am looking for.

Sadly its August...and there arent any to be found.

Would cutting pieces from a plastic drum give you enough flexibility for what you need? I was going to say buckets, but they're tapered. I don't know the sleds you're talking about, but I'm guessing that they're reasonably thick, and obviously flexible enough to roll up. When I were a lad we used to use plastic fertilizer bags, free from your local farmer.

When I was a kid, my parents had something like these sleds, but it was for holding open trash bags. The closest thing I can find to it online is this thing. I don't know if they still make it, but maybe you could find something to meet your needs at a lawn and garden shop?

Pop Quiz Time!

What material goes from this...


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to this?
( In .5 seconds.)

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Give up? Yes? You in the back? Nope. Sorry...its not Plexiglas.

Its...a plastic cutting board. Available at any kitchen store or dollar store for ...50cents.
Don't worry there is extra credit later.


So I'm driving home and it suddenly hit me that for this was perfect for my model. I can use the stainless strips in the larger model. But this is good for the small one. So I hastily constructed ( Cobbed together) a working model and got this...

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Isn't it sweet? I actually made a mistake doing the vanes so about 2/3 of the thrust is wasted. But we were itching to go to the stream. Note the high tech bearing system Im using, the broken shaft of a car window scraper. Its a 1.25 inch hole with a 7/8 spindle. Slightly noisy. Lots of drag.

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So here it is doing what we timed as just shy of 300 RPM...Notice we had to lift the penstock higher? The wheel doesn't like the drag of the water. With even less flow it actually went quite a bit faster. Its got some pull to it, but not very much. You can see the interruption in the water flow and the splash below.

Now. Here is the extra credit. Whats wrong with this picture?

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Snickers bar for them that can tell me...
Hate to say it, but if my design doesn't pan out, I'm building a Banki and cranking this little stream. But there is this little niggling idea I have of using the coil pump to develop artificial head. Cant seem to shake it.

Well, the water coming out of the back looks like it might be a problem. I can't see it clearly enough but it looks like you're actually using some energy to lift that water up.

The water is flowing upstream?

Thats right. The fallover from the vanes is causing water to be contained in the recesses of the fold and its not coming out until the start of the uphill swing when it gets released. Basically this robs me of power. Solution? Cut the vanes shorter and decrease the curvature.

I figured I had cut them too long anyway, but better to cut too long than too short.

More progress this morning when I figured out a way to make the wheel adjustable without having to take it apart. It looks good in theory anyway..

Im thinking now would be the time to look into a sturdy axle assembly so I can quantify my successes if I actually see any at all. What I would like to do now is make a coil pump out of of 3/4 OD Polyethylene and feed it to the center shaft with a hose bearing on the end to see how much lift/pressure I could generate. My thought is that if I could make two coil pumps and the feed them in opposite side of a pelton turbine then I could use the pelton as a generator and the water wheel as a conversion device to create head from no head at all. Im sure some efficiency is lost, but it would eliminate the need to run several hundred feet of pipe and enable folks with no head to run high head generators.

Crazy? yes.
But you only live once.

OK, I researched Banki turbines, now off to look up coil pump, whatever that might be! (I'm guessing it's a pump with some kind of coil arrangement.)

Please donate my Snickers bar to your young helpers.

Maybe you need something to break the tension that is holding the water together. Interesting concept maybe you can hook em up to all the storm water overflows in Burlington .

So, you want to research coil pumps? Go to www.lurkertech.com/water/pump/belcher/fish/

However, if you go to my website www.pegergy.org you will find the abstracts only. I took some heat over copyright issues so removed all the papers that were there.

As for your employer's negative reaction, forgive them (they pay you a salary, don't they?) because in all probability they do not understand how it works. Most folks do not understand how the thing works. "Oh, that's nothing new; tha's an Archimedean screw." And so on. Yes, I've been there many times!

Then, just to confuse everyone further, I went straight into the manometric engine. BTW, "manometric" is another term for "coil". After some 36 years I am still at it.

I had been trying unsuccessfully to build a bench model of the thermodynamic version of this engine. This is a true Brayton cycle (get some air, compress it, heat it, then allow the heated air to expand through a power section) using a manometric compressor and manometric power section in place of the axial compressor and turbine comprising conventional gas or combustion turbines. The problem is that in a model the dimensions and components are all scaled down but the molecules constituting the air are still at their normal size, and mass is critical to these engines. Moreover, in the manometric engine the fluids spend a relatively long time passing through the power coil thus giving them ample time to loose heat.

I finally decided to build a simple version that runs on compressed air to demonstrate my small contribution to the whole process. My original patent, long since expired, described the invention as "A means and aparatus for converting a fluid pressure into rotative motion", or words to that efect. The model was succesful. I ran it non-stop for just over an hour to prove that it was not some kind of over-unity gizmo that would eventually come to a grinding halt. However, from careful observation of the device as it ran, I came to realize that it was operating from very low air pressure, i.e. it must be highly efficient, which is something I have been arguing over the past 36 years. So I am in the process of completing a U-tube manometer that will be located in full view in the video to be taken sometime in the near future.

The net result of this whole venture has been, at most, about ten days inventing and designing, and the remainder of the intervening years defending myself, my sanity, and proving what this thing was capable of. The moral of the story, don't invent anything; you end up with too many arrows in your back, and that ruins good jackets! And that is a terrible message to pass on to inspire our young folks.

So, you didn't have to go far in your search for data on coil pumps. Inventor #2 is right here next door to you in New Hampshire! And just ten minute's drive away there is another guy who has done an immense amount of work in furthering this and other appropriate technologies. Just for good measure, George Brayton's business at the time of his untimely death in 1892 was based in Exeter, New Hampshire.

I will be more than happy to answer questions and help you understand this technology which, I can assure you, is a real brain teaser!

Good luck in your endeavors, and have fun.

Sorry, I think my posting went to the wrong folks. It was intended for Samuraijack

C'mon, you're just after the Snickers bar, aren't you?

Its really quite alright ....and Holy Crap! Its You!

I read your treatise on the fish transparency theory and design. Nice work.
I think I understand how the coil pump works, but if you have any insights I would be happy to hear them. Right now Im focusing on the wheel aspect to drive the pump. I think its a simple concept and I managed to satisy myself this weekend that it was a viable idea. I got a slightly more torque based reaction from the deep wells and a faster rotation ( once I cleaned out the pipe) with the turbine mode. I am , of course, limited to the absolute flow of the stream which gets me about 325-350 RPM if placed "just so" in an overshot configuration. It really likes to skim the outside. Im wondering if a wider version might be better for the idea. A slower, more purposeful rotation would be ideal to drive the coil pump. Im willing to bet that these can give a good amount of resistance as the pressure builds in the tubes.

You dont have to sell me on the coil pump since I built two scale models of it and both worked swimmingly well. Such a simple beautiful concept. Im just amazed that it has dissapeared so many times and that it keeps stubbornly coming back.

Basically it will come down to me needing to calculate the absolute flow and figuring out how to refine the extraction process. So I guess its time for the bucket test.

What man wouldnt be?

You're doing fine and going about things the right way. You obviously learn much by observation. In my view this is the basis of good engineering.

Whenever you are ready I'll be happy to back you up with the correct design for a water-powered version of the manometric engine. Attach a manometric pump to it to deliver pressurized water to drive an appropriate turbine to generate electric power, and viola!. Very similar to what you yourself proposed a while ago.

But it is here that we have to abandon simplicity. The dimensional matching of the extractor coil and the power coil is too critical for the variation in bore size of store-supplied tubing. Nonetheless, it is doable and lots of fun, but much depends on your skills and craft abilities.

Then there are the issues of regulations and cost. Vermont Natural Resources of some time ago blocked an aeration project for a fish farm. They claimed we were not allowed to extract water from any body of water, even if we were to return it shortly after, unless it was spring fed and the spring was on our land or property. This ruling must have changed because I am hearing of more and more small hydro sites coming on line in Vermont.

As for cost, that's the one aspect I have not found a satisfactory solution to, unless you get into the megawatt sizes. However, the Vermont Clean Energy Development Fund might be a source of $$$, if you are at all interested. Maybe we could put together some sort of proposal that would qualify, but obviously this must depend entirely on what your plans are.

Good luck with your endeavors and please keep me posted, particularly the results of your flow rate measurements. BTW, anything I do for you is absoulutely free of charge and without obligation, unless I incur actual out-of-pocket expenses, and that would happen only with your permission.

As I see things, it is your show and you are doing great. Look on me as the pizza delivery man -- I am at your service.

Sorry, Rat Lab, missed again! I must figure out how you guys maintain the correct thread links.

Hmmmm...I was under the assumption that the relationship between the pressure and the compression was a direct correlation to the length and number of coils using the constant size of the pipe as a given. I have tried the pump in both a single diameter coil and also in a inward spiral coil and it seems to work well in both areas. I have been toying with the idea of using the compression and reduction schemes that I see inside of a Nautilus shell as that MAY provide a more reliable compression technique. If I was to do this, I would have to create a Nautiloid spiral wheel, but I worked out an easy construction technique Saturday night. I THINK I may have come up with a way to reduce blowback on the wheel as well. I may have also come up with a means to incorporate two or three of these into a cylindrical chamber to develop a more contstant pressure...maybe



I appreciate the help. This is such an odd and curious tech that I just cant seem to let it go.

SJ

Just out of curiosity, what 'mode' are you dsplaying threads in? It seems to me that your replies are in perfect order. Go to the top of the thread and you should see an 'Options' button on the right hand side. Select 'Standard' under Display modes, and you should be seeing the same kind of thread display that the majority of us use.