Water Displacement Setup and Thoughts

[webby1]

yes,, but most of your added 12 inches of water are underneath the float not just 12 inches down, the water fell under the float as the float raised up.

[Jim Mac]

yes,, but most of your added 12 inches of water are underneath the float not just 12 inches down, the water fell under the float as the float raised up.

I don't think I even need to respond to this one. Water always adjusts to stay even. The float isn't a plug, it needs to have some space in the water vessel to move freely.

Below is 1 possible layout, but it's not confined to only this layout.

   

There is absolutely "No Concern" of water "falling under the float" preventing pumping.

I'll repeat the point here.  The power it takes to pump water out of the tank to the catch basin remains constant, and the output pressure of the float is adjustable by tweaking it's buoyancy.

[webby1]

draw a line at the bottom of the float in the start position, add the water and raise the float, draw a line at the bottom of the float at the new height,,,,, that water came from where? how does the water reach up the side so far???? what happens if I remove water without PUSHING the float back down???

I have tried to explain the basic process to no avail, I can only suggest building it for yourself.

[Jim Mac]

draw a line at the bottom of the float in the start position, add the water and raise the float, draw a line at the bottom of the float at the new height,,,,, that water came from where? how does the water reach up the side so far???? what happens if I remove water without PUSHING the float back down???

I have tried to explain the basic process to no avail, I can only suggest building it for yourself.

I think I see what your saying.  It CAN raise and lower a heavy weight for less input power than it would take to do so in a regular situation.  But converting this to usable power becomes a problem.

   

To keep that float submerged at the same level, it needs that weight it lifted to be acting against gravity to keep it down. 

I kinda ruled out building this at the moment because even if it did work, the mechanism would need to be HUGE to extract anything useful. 

Although I can think of other arrangements that "MAY" work for output gain.  But even so, to scale this would require a very large build

[webby1]

work can be done with the lifting float just like work can be done for the wheel rolling down a slope, the issue is the cost of putting things back to where they started from.

[unimmortal]

I'm going to chime in with a slightly different approach. It seems to me there needs to be another force engineered into the system.

When you take a bucket and lower it into water right to the brim, you are exerting maximum pressure, but you also have maximum vacuum available inside the bucket. Lowering the bucket into the water will initiate flow. With a dropped lip inside the bucket catching the flow (and stopping it from filling the bottom of the bucket) into the bucket and directing to a hose, we now have another potential to put into the equation as the float moves up and down.

[unimmortal]

I've got a 200L olive barrel buried to it's rim - about 4' x 1.5'. I use it to collect rainwater from a 12' x 12' shade cloth hanging above.

Thinking about how I could get water flowing to water the plants around it just using the pressure of the water and came up with this idea.

1. Outer diaphragm connected to a weight, filled with air and submerged
2. Inner diaphragm connect to outer diaphragm
3. Pressure valve that opens at a certain pressure to let water into the inner diaphragm
4. Pressure valve that opens at a higher pressure to evacuate the water upwards, under increased pressure due to the water entering the inner diaphragm and decreasing volume.

Not quite sure if it will pulse up and down, or whether I can introduce a feedback vacuum somehow that would keep it flowing.