We have fresh running water..no well... We just want to install it on our playground for the kids to experience a manual water pump. Can it be attached to running water? Do I need a tank? Help! Thank YOU!
It would be best to have an auto fill tank,one that shuts off at a certain level. You would want to have a tank that doesn't pressurize. You could bury it if you wanted to get more realistic. But keep the tank small, so little kids won't fit inside if you get my drift.
You can bury a tank, not metal or you willl be pumping rust. I would use fiber glass totally enclosed except for a fill hole which you can fill with a hose. Or run pvc to a water supply with a valve, cover it with planking and set up the pump over the planking. Some farm and feed supplies may have a lot of this.
With no offense meant at all to answer 1... I grew up without indoor plumbing on a farm. ALSO while this is to be functional it reads as if it's to be a demonstration of the process of lifting water by means of the action of a pump. I suggest certainly that it not strictly be a means for practical use IE: drinking; etc. Obviously you'd need a receptacle that will hold enough water to allow the pump to perform. A 5 gallon paint bucket could suffice perhaps. A platorm to bolt the pump head to, and perhaps some method of keeping it all from spilling over when eager students engage with it. I have never checked with HD or Lowes, but certainly online you'd get an answer rather quickly. Farm/Feed stores most definitely would have functional hand crank/lever, water pumps. Also often sold in RED or GREEN,,,smile. I'll assume you have a custodian/maintenance person/husbands/boyfriends/fathers/mothe... who would be happy to get involved and you could be pumping in less than an hour. The situation obviously can be portable and brought indoors at the end of any day you choose to use it for the purposes you define. Steven Wolf
Go okorder before you do anything serious or the local health department. This could be opening up a whole new avenue of new lawsuits and illnesses to you and those around you, check first. My daughter drank some water out of a free flowing well, well she was plowing a field recently, she contracted a parasite that almost killed here, one that only comes from birds that drops it's feces while drinking at a water supply. Some states require drinking water to have a cement barrier 18 inches thick and three feet wide around it. Sorry.
