Recently bought a Hozelock 25m Compact Reel Hose to clean muck of the MTB after rides (and wash my car). Have a tap at the front of my house, but only a water butt in my rear garden. Would prefer to clean my bike at the back of the house (less spectators….) and possibly the added option to use less drinking water by using collected rain water instead…if I manage to solve this problem:

Managed to fit a hoselock on the tap of the water butt, but that water pressure from the water butt is far too low to get water to the end of the hose (even worse when you lift the hose), as it’s just gravity that’s there to drive it really. Anyone’s got a smart suggestion for this at all ? Have no mains electricity in my rear garden if you were going to suggest a pump by the way. Maybe something battery operated ?

Lift the water butt higher up – more gravity = more pressure.

or dig a big hole in garden…

Or dig a pit to wash your bike in and leave the water butt where it is

add a water wheel to the feed from the gutter and then have that power a small bore pump (with secondary solar/wind power) that fills a tank in your loft, then run a feed from the loft tank back down to your garden to give you a gravity fed bike wash, an accessible warden water butt and something to talk to people about at boring dinner partys and family gatherings?

even if you raise it up 10feet I doubt if there’ll be enough pressure to run a hose at anything more than a dribble.

make it air tight with an open/close valve on the drainpipe, fit a track pump to it and then presurise it like those pump up garden sprayers?

(alternatively just buy one of them and fill it from your waterbutt?)

bucket & brush ?
extension lead ?

or else decant the water into a giant balloon and employ a group of children to squeeze it while you work

Did I say I was going to give out a grand price to the most stupid suggestion ??

No but you could be in line for the most stupid question prize 🙂

Oh and my stupid suggestion is to use a small explosive charge in the water butt.

A drill powered pump – seems a faff but….
Drill pump

wait…

how about letting the water dribble out of the butt and then pick up your bike and RUN towards it as fast as you can ?

(saves on employing children, too)

Pressure = Density x Gravity x Height
Your gardens going to look pretty stupid with a 10m tower just to get you 1bar of pressure.

One of THESE
is what you need, along with an extension lead & RCD adapter.

0.6 litres / second should be good enough to wash a bike.

So – you want to save drinking water, but don’t mind using electricity for power??

Get a bigger butt and just park your bike in it. All the dirt will dissolve off. (PS – remember to remove your disk pads first).

Get a bigger butt. A really tall one on a tower, like they have in America.

(I like big butts and I can not lie)

Snigle
:o)

The shower in our house (and many others I suspect) uses a gravity feed for pressure, about a 7 foot drop gives a reasonable shower for us so you don’t need a huge tower to get that pressure.
Or a caravan pump/dirtworker and a “leisure” battery?

oopps, i was about to dissagree with takisawa, which would have been sily seeing as i do this for a living :-S

Central heating pumps are cheep and easy to wire up, provide quite considerable pressures/flowrates as well. Combine with a set pressure valve on a recycle loop and your away.

Found this

So did I but as you said you had no leccy in back garden I did not see any point posting it

Hand Pump

Don’t need lecy and you don’t need to raise the butt off the ground.

Only thing is you will need someone to pump while you wash…

Petrol driven pressure washer feeding from it – job done 😉

Mind you, they can be a bit savage so watch the bearings!

Pumps and solar don’t go very well btw – they need a fairly big power draw to start up. Since you don’t need much pressure though you probably could get away with using a pond pump, run off a solar cell/battery – it may just about do the job.

You want high pressure water out of your butt?

[Sniggers like a child/]

Butt Pump
[Sniggers like another child]

To be honest it’s your best option but it will empty you butt out quickly [snigger again] or just get a dirt worker if you can get a car’s working fag lighter socket to the area.

If you are looking at a pond pump like RobS says you need to remember it needs to lift water to a height of 10meters just to get 1 bar of pressure.

A £250 Ubbink Cascademax lifts up to 6m = 0.6bar which is not enough for a normal spray gun yet it moves 18,000lph when not lifting any height.

Put a giant size child’s balloon inside the water butt, strap lid down with roof rack ties, blow up balloon with 12V car tyre pump.

I’ve never tried this 😆

cheaper

I’ve always been a bit wary of the drill powered pumps, 240v drills aren’t rated for using anywhere where there is water splashing about. A submersible will be a lot quieter too.

buy once of those pump up pressure things for spraying pesticides. fill it up from butt.

it is what we use when out with the car to clean bikes. usually fill it up from stream or the spring tap things that are everywhere in germany. works as well as these dirtworker/washer things from halfords without having to have a working cigarette lighter in the car, like my car for instance.

certanly cheaper than a dirtwork, no faffing with electricks, the pressure isn’t so high as to blast the seals, turns off atumatically when not being used and kids can run around in summer having a water fight (with water from butt obviously).

dirtworker feeding from butt

A water hammer pump? – we are not really helping are we?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram

You could cut yourself a piece of wood, plastic etc… that fits perfectly inside the butt, when you want to wash something then stick a breeze block on top on the piece of wood forcing it down and thus forcing the water out at a high rate…or something like that?

NOTE: don’t leave the piece of wood in there all the time or you won’t collect any rain water :p