Looking for Mentor, brand new to this site/board

General Discussion
#21

Hi back TomB.
DanA. brings up the critical decision choice as far as I am concerned.

Current modern home living keep coming down to a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 energy use split-out.
1/3 annual personal/household energy uses for different transportation needs.
1/3 for the combination of in-home, shops, greenhouse heating and for many; air conditioning.
1/3 for the combination of electrical power for refrigeration, food freezing, lighting, communications/entertainments.

You can buy-out and be outside beholding for each and every mile/kilometer; horsepower/hour, watts/hours of this used.
Do a lot of conservation’s; equipment’s upgrading to cut these buy-out energies beholdings in-half; or even down to 35-40% of the average joe-blow fully culturally bought-in consumer household.
You are still 100% sheeple dependent for all of your used energies. Worse. As every new-god developer comes out with a newer, better, lower energy system-device; you then, always-looking are much more likely to $'s shell out chasing watts-savings.

I live where with modest home design and seasonal management we do not have, do not need, have never installed air-conditioning.
I have invested and payed-in to be able to 100% heat with our own home-grown wood.
So . . . already for most all of my life we are 33% more energy freedom independent than anyone else not doing this.
The few dedicated daily woodgas vehicle driving guys here can say they are 2/3rds Freedom Energy independent as most of them also home source and heat with their own wood. To go full off-Grid for their home use electricity would be straining their wood supply by one full measure again. One must be practical doing these things for real.
By my values this is much better than the greenest, use-least, Eco-Modern will ever achieve.

Now to 100% of the time replace my 1/3rd electrical refrigeration’s/lighting/communications-entertainments with woodgas made electricity would 2X the amount of annual wood fuel as I already harvest and store.
Just like these few woodgas vehicle driving and wood heating fellows are doing now. Ha! I got old, man. Once, was, I could, and did, these equivalents annual . . . not anymore. Again. One must choose practical-doing over woods-dreaming.

Do all three? Nope. I know of none doing this because of the actual personal sweat-hours in woods handling and multiple systems repairs and maintenance that’d take annually.
These are the realities. Period.

Sure. Sure. Many, if not most, like to brag about their accomplishments-savings.
Just now today for the second of six days I am going to take care of the chickens and livestock of a local library friend who is justifiably proud of his very energy saving small foot print super insulated earth sheltered house. He does heat/ventilate this on as little as 2 cords annually of Douglas fir wood from his 21 acres. Instant demand electrical hot water heater. All mini sized energy saver appliances.
He uses so little of big-hydro electricity that he see no need to ever invest in either PV solar or a woodgas-to electricity system.
Where is he that I am doing his animals duties for these six days?
Commercial jet airplane flew from Portland Or to visit friends in San Diego CA. So . . . 40 mile from his place in his up-cycled purchased used 2009 Toyota car to a different Portland OR friends house. 12 mile x2 for that friend to drive him back and forth to the Portland airport in her very super efficient Prius V.
And he does this commercial jet airplane fly-away to friends traveling at least four times a year.
He is miffed when I tell him that he actually uses at least three time the annual “planet killing CO2 emitting” transportation energy as stay-in-state me. This is the biggest of modern Eco-Greens self-lies.

Grid powers goes out: we finally have our 9.0 Cascadia event and he and his “friends” will have virtually nothing past 2-3 days. HE IS ON A STANDALONE DEEP electrical pumped water well. He refused to see the need to get a “selfish-use, polluting, planet-killing, personal engine driven generator”.

My grid power goes out an I am back to electrical using in 20 minutes with gasoline. Past 3-4 days of that, and I am into a 30-45 days stretch-it-out mode with on-hand in-vehicles and lawnmowers gasolines. Same could be done with tanked/stored propane. Looking past 30-45 days and I’d then be on woodgas-for-electricity and all scaled-back electricity using appliances.
Ha! Take a real long event with collapse of vehicle-inspectors-enforcers for me with my history to be able to actually vehicle woodgas. But . . . I have the shoulder-looking over; and equipments stored to be able to do that on the JD tractor. If ever, needs must driven.
Cascadia event and we will have a long Puerto Rico-like recovery time. Anything goes then.

So what I’ve told actual mountains-folk growers needing boo-cue lighting energy is . . . . .
Stay on Grid for your home electricity. Big-Brother Monitored with normal usage.
Shout out, and use propane for all of your home heating needs such as space, cooking, hot water heating. OK. That propane truck coming 3-4-5 times a year becomes a normal too. An expectation.
And if the income from your, “grow” caanot buy these bought outs . . . . you need to be doing somthing diffnert. Like working out for someone else.
Then . . . .later . . . switch heating in the house and shops to un-monitored wood stoves. Use the brought-in propane then for green house electrical lighting. It does make heat too at the engine generator! Engine exhaust CO2 growth enhancement boosting. Propane engine exhuast is super clean.
Only later as you have the make-more wood capability learned from the woodstove suplping; only then convert that greenhouse propane generator to woodgas.

The wood fuel you home-site grow, harvest and then use for your energy IN ANY WAY is what gives you your base Energy Freedom claim.
Nothing else cuts any of your energy beholding out ties.

But hey. This is me. MY values system.
I only value those who are DOing DIY energy for themselves in any way as having accomplished anything of value.
Edison, Tesla never actually made their own heat or their own used electricity. Not even their own food or meals. And neither does the Gates’s, Musk’s, or Job’s.
George Westinghouse did these. The current actual DOers do these sweating freedoms too.

Regards
Steve Unruh

4 Likes
#22

Start out with your inverter set up and make it as universal as possible. Do not use lead acid batteries, you can get LifePO4 cells cheap and set them up for any voltage you want.

You can then start out with a simple engine direct coupled to an alternator and then grow the system from here. Id just stick with a 12 volt system. Yes going higher voltage is more efficient. But that comes with limitation and drawbacks. Its not worth the little bit of efficiency you gain.

The biggest issue going larger is the higher you go the more your batteries will cost. This is because when you hook up batteries in series you gain nothing in capacity. When you hook up in parallel is when the capacity will grow per bank added.

So for instance, you have 8 of the LifePo4 cells running at 3.2 volts @ 8 amp hours. and you build 2 banks of 4S out of the 8 you then will have 16 amp hours capacity. If you build this for 24 volts you would then have a single 8S bank but only will have 8 amp hours capacity.

Here is my cheap 12 volts system, Inverter is a 12 volt 5 kW Harbor Freight special, coupled to four 4S LifePo4 banks giving me 32 amp hours. The BMS I went big with a 200 amp so I can add a ton more cells later and use this single BMS.

The generator is the prototype for the VersaFire system. This has a 212 cc predator engine direct coupled to a GM alternator. It came off an 5.3 LS motor. It is important that you use an internally cooled alternator if you go direct couple as the pulley fastener nut will be eliminated. You can go with belts but if you drive it hard belt slipping may be an issue and this is more complex to do. Direct coupld is 1:1 and this is about perfect for the 212 cc engine, you could go with a 200 amp alternator even The cool thing about a DC generator you have the option to run it at low RPMs or if you want more power you simply crank her up. You dont have this option with AC and you can get much more out of a smaller engine as you can run much higher than 1800 rpms. This will be even more important if you run with wood gas.

From here you can then add a gasifier system along with wind or solar.

The control box is my auto gen start start system. This monitors the battery bank and self starts and shuts down the generator automatically for me. When the battery needs charged. This is why this has a starter / generator beneath the alternator; as this is used for starting and will be very robust for automated wood gas start ups. No worries about duty cycle with this starter.

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#23

headway cells? What BMS did you go with?

#24

Yup I got them from battery hook up. They are second hand at 10 bucks a cell I thought they were a good deal. This bank here has more energy density than two 1000 cca deep cycle batteries that I replaced. I think there is a bad cell in the bunch as well. So it will probably do even better once it either balances out or I replace that cell.

I got the BMS off of ebay,

https://www.ebay.com/itm/4S-80A-100A-200A-12V-LiFePO4-Lithium-Battery-Protection-Board-BMS-Balance-3-2Vx4/323872173810?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=512898190945&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

#25

Link to the Headway cells

https://batteryhookup.com/products/4-headway-38120-hp-3-2v-8ah-lifepo4-lithium-batteries-25c-200a-super-cells?rfsn=1780762.2b5a7

1 Like
#26

Steve well said. I am in the 1/3 who heats with wood group myself. I really love the warmth of a wood stove and the knowledge that I filled my shed with wood myself.
But I give Edsion a little more credit it amazes me that he designed and built batteries which are still in usage today a century after he built them. Sure they have issues but those are amazing.

2 Likes
#27

Not to high-jack this thread too much, but I am not sure I follow your logic, Matt. (also I really like talking about batteries :grinning:)

If you start with 8 batteries, you are not going to change the storage capacity by re-configuring the voltage - since what we are really talking about with battery storage is energy - or Watt Hours. The 8x 3.2v 8AH batteries are going to store 204.8 WH no matter how you wire them. The loss in capacity is made up for by the gain in voltage. What you get out of bumping your system up to 24 volts (for example) is a reduction in the amount of current you need to supply for a given load. If we are talking about a fixed number of batteries, the efficiency gains really only come into play with the wiring. The extreme example is; say you want to run a 1200watt pump at the bottom of a 200 foot deep hole. If you are going to do it on 12v, you are pushing 100amps, and not even 4/0 cable is going to cut it.

I think in the past 12v maybe had a slight advantage in that there were more products readily available in that voltage, but I feel like that is not really the case anymore. (I run 24 volts, and it is not hard to find appliances, pumps, LED lights, charge controllers and inverters that are set up for that voltage - and sometimes even both). About the only thing that I have not seen is a 24v phone charger, and for that you just need a DC-DC converter.

Anyway, to weigh in on Tom’s actual questions, I am now curious why you want to make 15-25kw? That is a LOT of power. If you need industrial quantities of power, the electric company is going to be the cheapest route. For a small backup to keep your beer cold until the power comes back on, woodgas would work great, and is a lot of fun.

@SteveUnruh, I like your division of power into thirds. Someday I would like to have the full Wooden Triad, but I still burn dinosaurs in my car :grinning:

6 Likes
#28

Good point Carl, I guess I cant argue with Ohm Law. Yeah you are right. So there must be something else going on with the 48 volt inverter I have. When I switched from that 48 volt inverter to 12 volt I was getting 3 to 4 times the run time. It maybe that inverter is consuming more as it is a 12 kW inveterter.’
’
However, 48 volt vs 12 volt everything is much more expensive. for 48 or is non existent. For instance to build that DC generator, You could find that alternator in just about any junk yard and they are around 100 bucks new. Your going to have a much more difficult time building this in 48 volt. I do have a permanent magnet 48 volt alternator but there is no way to regulate its voltage.

2 Likes
#29

Yeah, I agree about 48 volts, it is really only suited to really big projects (with plenty of money to throw around). I would not really suggest 48 volts for a little backup system, it is just too specialized. 12 and 24 volt alternators are both easy to find, although 12v is certainly the winner there if you want to be able to easily scrounge parts.

As for your run time, I suspect you are onto something with the size of the inverter. A large inverter will easily be the biggest load in a backup system. My 1800watt xantrex draws 20 watts all day long. That works out to 480wh per day, which is more than my little DC freezer uses! That model though has a power-saving mode where the inverter goes to sleep when there is no load on it, which drops it down to 1.5w. I use that in the winter sometimes when solar power is scarce, but its annoying because it needs a load of about 20 watts to kick on - so a single LED lightbulb wont do it. So you have to flick on 2 light switches, and then wait a second until the inverter senses it and comes on.

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#30

I like the

too.

Music to my ears to listen to people who know what they are talking about. People who know the value of energy and those who can tell the difference between energy and power.

I should be proud to be in the 2/3 category, but from a global perspective the world should probably be better off if I moved to an apartment, stayed put and collected stamps for a hobby. Like holding on to a train in India for transportation - you put very little extra strain to the system.

The need of energy differs a lot depending on how and where you live. I would say I use 1/2 for heat, and 1/4 each for transportation and electric.
Cost is a different story. 2/3 of my electric bill is connection only and I doubt I could make my own electricity cheaper, even if I went off-grid and considered my own labour involved free.
I could even heat with electricity and end up with an electric bill only twice as expensive.
Transportation is where I get most “bang for the buck” producing my own energy. I can save 1/2 of my total energy cost only using a fraction of the wood it takes replacing the other 1/2, even though I drive only 7-8000 miles a year.
Now that I think of it, half of the heat and electricity cost can be considered wife’s consumption, while the driving I mentioned is 90% my own. Numbers get even better then.
One more thing: The energy needed for store bought food and gadget supply should be taken into the equation as well, but calculations get complicated then.

3 Likes
#31

This might be a small error as this website states:
“2.5 -3 lbs of bone dry wood = 1 kw/h @ peak engine output”

Which does the same here in my experiments ( 1,2 kg per Kwh Electric )

Can you look up the pages where this discrepance might occur ?

1 Like
#32

Hi All, Maybe I can clarify some of this in these exchanges.
The motor-generator Matt is using is a four pole Japanese Hitachi. Net look these up from this. Used readily available off of golfcarts. Much, much, better than the earlier only two pole usa Delco-Remy version.

KoenVL the pound of wood for kw/h is one of my big complaints.
What wood; at what moisture content?
What gasifier system; at what conversion to fuel grade gas efficiency?
What IC engine; at what IC engine efficiency when on woodgas fuel?
What shaft/belt electrical generator system at what generating efficiency?
Truely this actually can be as low as one pound of wood for every one kW/el. When everything is optimal.
Nothing ever remains optimal.
And in his book Ben does say I recall 2-21/2 pounds of fuel wood for one kW/h of usable electrical as the best expectation.

Why I have said, and will continue to say the key to actual woodgas for practical use purposes is to home/shop wood heat FIRST.
My very efficient in-room EPA certified QuadraFire brand wood stove is rated as 72% conversion efficient. Output ranged from 11,000 to 55,000 BTU’s per hour. THEY DO NOT RATE WOOD USE CONSUMPTION. Too many user induced variables.
Actual use with my Dough Fir fuel wood at a real winter air humidity of 15-22% moisture by weight this needs from 2 to 11 pounds of fuel wood an hour.
After learning woodgas and using that, plus previously learned vehicle fuel stretching techniques I dropped my annual Doug Fir use from 6-8 cords (~924 cubic feet) a year; to 4-5 cords (~594 cubic feet) a year. Say ~10,800 pounds drown from 16,800 pounds.
My tricks? Just like with electricity usages you do not use/need firing 24/7/365.
I stove fire up and use actuality only at most 16 hours a day in two separate burns. Thermal-mass’s heat coast along between. Wife work gone; or us in-bed the house does not need to be held at a boring constant fixed temperature.
Electricity only ever really used for us for ~16 hours of the 24. Here home in 2-3 distinct daily using up to an actual 8-12 kW/h burst surges. Most other hours at only 1 kw/h. 6-8 hours at less than 400 watts.
This is on have-all-you-want-to-pay-for outside supplied Big-Grid.

Off-Grid self-made electrical requires a strong commitment for each and every person in the house hold. Believe me that ainta’ never going to happen here. Not voluntarily.
Unless . . . . outside events dictate this! Then the she-who-must-be-obeyed will count you a Hero for being able to supply something/anything.

So not speaking for you Tom Butler; but for far too may I have exchanged with in the past (and present) they try and design for their expectant instant-on households residents.
This is a fools errand. The Grids deliver and are priced to make you that fool. Go third world, and in areas with no Big-Grids and then you can hero-on DIY power make.

Truly actual personal Freedom is opting out of the Top-Downers addictions and not-cents inducements as much as you can.
Real Freedom costs. Pay the prices to your ability to sweat them out. At reduced use comply as you must.

And LiFePO cells? Yes if your are supplying and shipping with a warranty system.
I’ll stick with in every single car, truck, RV, riding lawn more lead acids thank you.
Come Cascadia 9.0 (41 of these in the previous 10,000 years and we are 75 years overdue now) be plenty of these lead acids sitting around fuel-less. No Amazon, UPS, FedEX then either.
And lots and lots of brought down to the ground trees. Buildings made into wood “waste”.

Regards
Steve unruh

6 Likes
#33

First of all…LOL…Carl, you cracked me up with this post. Not exactly sure why, but I found it very funny.

Second, Tom Butler, welcome to DOW. I have been out of the loop for a few weeks and will be again for the next couple months, Nevertheless, welcome.

Third, As many have already said, you have stumbled into a whole nest of qualified mentors here.
Suggestions:
Do a lot of reading on this site,
get Wayne’s book, decide for sure which style of gasifier you want to build before you start.

as for apprehension, I think with the help of this group, most anyone can build a functional gasifier. I’ll do a little bragging here for an example: check out a thread titled “Jakob’s WK Dakota”. Punch it into the search bar in the magnifying glass icon. We can’t take Jakob to town any more without getting bombarded with fans since he was in the paper lately.

Fourth, The Point is, if you want to build a gasifier and are committed to making it happen, these guys will help you get it done. Just a suggestion though,…they like to help even more when you put up lots of detailed pictures and videos…
Also, you have quite a few guys in your part of the country who are very adept at DOW.

Again, Welcome. Billy in Alabama

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#34

Yup, 1,2 Kg is the best i have seen in my personal life so far ( converted to Lbs = exactly in the same range as Ben Peterson ) ( the 2.5 - 3 Lbs is actual on the website advertised )
So, Tom Butler must have made a typo…
Edit: the source of my info: http://www.woodgasifierplans.com/
at the bottom of the page

SU; It is not meant to say that Ben Peterson was wrong, the opposite is true…
And i actually did something what you recommended and will not regret; i did buy his documentation i am enjoying it.

5 Likes
#35

Very astute observation and approach. This is very similar to the hypermiling technique of surge and glide driving ( standard transmission) the power is generated at peak efficiency in bursts, so that makes sense. I do get some amusement out of separate firings in the winter though, as here you have basically one fire, from October till April. :smiley:

The other thing I want to comment on is the thirds idea. As Jo mentioned, a good general observation. As is yours about the eco green fellow blowing the carbon budget with the air travel. Gotta love the people with the butterfly gardens, bicycles and the reusable shopping bags who then like to get away to Mexico once or twice a winter, each flight emitting CO2 equivalent to 8 momths of driving an hour a day… Apparently people suck at math and logic. But are great at self serving.

I wanted to comment about the third for home heating or cooling. This can be eliminated. The university of Manitoba is a bit of a hotbed for straw bale house construction. One of the profs wrote on a site that on average a home in Manitoba will need no additional heating if insulated to R60. Straw bales are roughly in that range. Solar gain and normal household energy use should in principle balance heat loss if that level of insulation is met. The important fact often missed is that air conditioning loads will be reduced about the same ,it’s all about heat flow.

Normal building techniques negate the efficiency gains of super insulation with their cost , but straw trumps all. There are other ways, crossing studding with lumber to eliminate thermal bridging, and then blowing wall cavities full of cellulose insulation, but straw is the lowest material cost and carbon footprint. If houses were built with an R60 insulation, it would be a different world. And if building new, it seems an obvious no brainer. Why cut wood, when you can just avoid the work by building to a proper standard?

4 Likes
#36

You need a high thermal mass stove. When I had a Tarm wood gasification boiler I only filled it 2 or 3 times a day it would relite off the heat in the chamber for up to 12 hours and would burn the entire load of wood storing the warmth in the 700 gallon hot water tank. Building a Masonry heater for my current home is on the dream list. Ofcourse this old farm house needs some of that modern insulation stuff first… :wink:
But yes effectively in all things is a great place to start. Back on point a little storage with power generation will help ballance the load and allow a smaller generator to meet your demand with less runtime.

2 Likes
#37

Hi All. I am back after three days solid of “holiday” slaving with my wife home and her projects.

My wife is really much the solar-laundry Queen. She had a family welder friend make her up two additional steel T arm cloths line posts. Then spent a year nagging me to get these in concrete set up. So . . . with the old her GrandMa’s and Mothers 40 foot x four line set up . . . .now her “new” five line x 50 foot set up makes for a full FOUR large washer capacity of solar drying at the same time.
Me? I lazy. I’d stuff a washer laundry load into the electric cloths dryer. Twist the timer, push a button. Take a nap. Then buzzer woken up. Done&fold/hang-up.

I say this here to illustrate that woodgas building and designing to support anyone of these: electric cloths dryer; electric four burner range with oven; electric hot water heater will force into a 10-12 kW/el capable system. I’ve had the diesel and gasoline fueled systems capable of this.
Not “desires” you’d want to wood fuel hog feed.
Use your wood as direct-use heating fuel to more directly do these.

Deep water wells. I looked at; traveled, and over-the-shoulders saw what others were doing.
Again with electricity a woodgas bugger-do to achieve.
There are DC motored submersible pumps. 24, 36, 48 volt. Gets overall system expensive. Still you are having to supply 2-2/1/2 horsepower down to the bottom of that deep well.
Instead I chose to start collecting the components for a 1/2 horsepower solution to our 192 foot deep private well.
A Baker Monitor Jr. pump jack. Belt driven either electric motor, or small IC engine. Just not enough reliable wind here to commit that way.
The then the well used pumping-stand. An old yard ornament.
Next will need the new drop in well pipe delivery and sucker rods.
The end of pipe actual either single or dual action lift pump.
Single action and this can deliver 20-30 gallons an hour to a 20-30 foot high supply tank for my 1/2 horsepower.
Dual-action could even to demand make a 20 psi pressurized system with a pressure reservoir tank. Then take 3/4 horsepower.
Not cheap either to get completely set up. But virtually ALL see-do repair/fix/restore mechanical.

I also should not disparage my donkey-rescue fly-away friend either. He actually energy-wise does much personally on just an Vietnam-veterans retirement income.
He IS one of the ones who completely heats his place on his own harvested wood.
Gary Tait I said that he does his house heating and VENTILATION on just two cord of Doulas Fir wood.
He has in his small footprint three level built into a hillside bank house over 2000 books shelved . . . . by authors and dewy decimal system.
Humidity control. And Ventilation. Ventilation. Ventilation.
Some here PNW wetside have tried straw-bale super insulating deling building. Last livable for about 3 high wet humidity winters. Then either drivien into high enrgy whole house dehumisifier systmes. Or Abandoning from built up molds spores. PNW wetside these mold spore are dormant millennia’s buildup in all dusts and dirt’s. Air carried throughout.
Our former President Barrack Obama early in his first term spouted out that if everyone in America would just paint their roofs white that the USofA energy problem would be greatly solved. Wrong Dude! Here PNW wet/westside you make your roofs dark colored! Make heat to conserve building heat out flow in the predominate 9-10 months. Open up and ventilate the dark under-roof for the 6 weeks of heat building up.

Same-same anywhere. Anytime.
You build design/build for the 75-85% circumstances.
Rethink actual needs. Rejigger usages… Store a bit of burst for the short term extremes.
ANY ONE system you cater for all possible range of possibilities will be overbuilt. Expensive to maintain and operate.
And you will run short of resources for too many other needful thing to get done.

Ha! Now ME clearing off that 320 lineal feet of clothes lines in the next two day before the next upcoming rains. You must fold and hang one piece at a time on removal. Or wrinkles.
I 'druther be fence building. Firewood cutting/gathering/storing. My personal energy/time plan.
My daily meds only carry me so far for remembering and sequencing in a day. Then I become very forgetful and just want to sit and sleep the time away.
But I love my wife. She tolerates my excesses.
Regards
Steve Unruh

4 Likes
#38

Who folds clothes? There’s always a fence or something better to do… :smiley:

As for water pumping, two other things - look up the EMAS videos of very simple pressure pumps.

The other idea, though likely less efficient, but dead simple in operation, is to use a compressed air system to geyser pump water. Though your particular situation may not supply sufficient wind power to compress air (but maybe it could), many could employ such a system, particularly on shallower wells.

Regarding the straw bale, you guys are in mushroom heaven, but that’s an exceptional situation. I have read studies of bale wall moisture content in the PNW, and they report moisture stability a good margin below biological activity. As in any environment the bale walls tend to moisture content roughly the same as wood stored in a woodshed.

What you are describing sounds more like a poor house management issue, and mostly particular to your very exceptional circumstances. It stands to reason that in extremely high ambient humidity and high insulation with a rather small temperature differential, heating might not be employed, which would inevitably lead to mold and air quality issues, just as careless people with grow ops run into. In such cases supplemental heat and open windows should be employed, or active heat recovery ventilation.

I’d sooner insulate once than cut wood forever.

5 Likes
#39

Tom,
Thanks for starting this topic. You have stimulated a classic DOW exchange. As you can see from the free flow of opinions and ideas, we “mentor” one another around here. Grace and peace.

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#40

While the topic is wondering, I’ll insert this bit of information about unconventional deep well pumps for those who may not already be aware of it. Many Amish people are now using a deep well pump operated on compressed air for their water supply. I thought it was so neat that I almost bought one. It uses air as a piston in a submersible pump. As the pressure drops on the water use side, the compressed air side goes into action until the water and air pressure are equalized. They seem to be very reliable. It is made by the Amish so there is no website. Here is a link to their contact information: https://www.manta.com/c/mrptz7d/hidden-view-pump-works. There was a website which offered their product, but I don’t remember the business name. You can call or write and they will send literature on their products.

5 Likes