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My brother gets his water from a small stream using a hydraulic ram. He made it himself, using mostly pipe fittings and it has been in almost continuous use for about 20 years. The volume of the pump is not very much, but it constantly is working, pushing water to a storage tank uphill from his buildings. To get a hydraulic ram to work, you need to have some water dammed up some elevation higher than the pump. The pump itself is little more than a pressure chamber and a couple of one way check valves. The pump wastes most of the water that comes from the pipe that is uphill, but pushes a small part of the water into the pressurized discharge pipe for use where you want it. A hydraulic ram is a clever way to use the energy of the water flowing downhill. There are some downsides. Since it is surface water, there is a good chance that it is contaminated with stuff you don't want to get inside your body. Giardia cysts are the most obvious contaminants in the North Idaho area, but they are fairly easy to filter out. Less obvious are the potential bacteria. My brother has a serious filter system (that costs a couple of hundred dollars a year for new elements) and also an ultraviolet sanitizer, which requires electricity. Another problem they have encountered is that the water is so soft, they have experienced some erosion of some of their metal piping. It is great for washing clothes though. Even though the pumping doesn't cost him anything day to day, my brother has a bunch of money invested in burying the various pipes and the tank, to keep them from freezing in the winter. And he occasionally has to mess with his dam and intake filters, or tinker with the hydraulic ram. When he put the system in, he didn't have electricity, but since they moved out there, they put it in. I think that if my brother had it all to do over, he would have drilled a well, put in a submersible pump and had a conventional water system, just because it would be less trouble. But live and learn!
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