Emergency preparedness and self-sufficient living cross paths through hand water pumps. While well pumps like these lessen your dependence on traditional water sources, they provide a solution to providing you and your family with water in droughts and power outages. Although many well pumps are motorized for convenience, hand water pumps are used as a backup in case of a loss of power. A hand pump, however, can become motorized through the addition of a motor and a solar panel. This way, you have a single device to pump water with hand pump and solar power or battery-activated motor.

18 Volt Batteries

Hand water pumps, such as those by Simple Pump, can bring water up from 350 feet below ground, although most use it for depths of 100 feet. When used as a backup or by itself, the manual pump can be installed into four to eight-inch wells. The pump can be operated when sharing the same well with an electric submersible pump, bringing up five gallons of water per minute.

18 Volt Batteries

Hand water pumps use a pump rod design. For Simple Pumps, this requires eight pounds of pressure to be applied to a 24-inch handle. Longer handles need less pressure for bringing up water.

Manually pumping water up from an aquifer every day can be exhausting, however. A family, for example, needs at least 250 gallons per day. Some may even use up to 1000 gallons per day. To calculate this, a manual water pump brings up five gallons of water per minute and, if an individual works constantly, 300 per hour. At this rate, a person would need to pump regularly without stopping for nearly three and a half hours to bring up 1000 gallons. Although not a bad workout, it becomes tiring and time-consuming when done daily.

As a solution, a hand water pump can be motorized. A 105ME/GM 12 volt DC 60 rpm 1/5 hp bolt-on motor extension can be added to a manual well pump from Simple Pump. This particular motor can use two forms of power: a battery with 200 amp-hours and a 130-watt solar panel.

Hand Water Pumps by Simple Pump: Three Forms of Power in One Device

18 Volt Batteries