If you need to pump water up to 200m lift, then a locally-made water pump with only one movin part can probably help you. I realise that this isn't for everyone. But I also know that a few of my readers are on hobby farms and the second most prohibitive cost of having bore water is the pump and running power to it.
The Brumby pumps come in a few basic configurations, and use compressed air to lift the water. The one moving part is a ball valve, and apparently the whole pump's pretty much everything-proof and doesn't jam or wear out. The Brumbies are very economically priced and because they run on compressed air, you can run a piece of tubing from a compressor somewhere nearer to power (or use solar or wind to compress air) - and that saves the usually horrendous cost of running waterproof electric lines down into your borehole full of WATER. (Which is the natural enemy of anyone fool enough to hold onto a live electric cable near...)
The pumps can lift up to almost 200 meters, and produce a flow of up to 10,000 liters per hour, according to the video on the website.
Here's an article and a video one of these pumps used in south america to supply a community farm, and here's a link to Brumby Pumps in Toodyay, which is a bit more than an hour's drive out of Perth, and I'll quite happily drive out there and check them out and provide a more in-depth article, if there's interest in the product.
I'm so proud and happy to have found another one of those examples of local ingenuity, and I'm all for Australia leading in such things as cheap water supply and (another article coming up later) small scale biodiesel generating plant. Also you may have seen solar panels out in the middle of paddocks apparently doing not much, well they are Sunmills, they use a low voltage pump to do the job windmills used to do, of filling stock and irrigation water tanks, and they are developed and made in Fremantle. Again, if there's interest I'll go and do an in-depth on this technology as well.
For now, please pass these links on to anyone you in turn know who's involved in providing cheap community water, or who has a farm or hobby farm, or even who has a bore for their garden and has let the pump rust in piece because of the expense of replacing it.
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