Tuesday, Jul 04, 2006 at 23:58
Hello Freewheelers,
Lone Ranger here.... Your water pump has a stainless steel strainer, that takes out everything down to the fine sand level. The problem is that a fine speck of sand can jam up the internal valving just enough to have the pump short cycle every five minutes or so until the speck is blown our. We do not have significant problems with the pump we use, not even maybe 1 in 500, except for this "debris in the valve" leaking down of the system and short cycle on the pump.
In a fast moving stream, the suspended sand in the creek could be a problem. Or if the suction line was too close to the bottom. Better to bucket it out with a 20 litre like you are on track with, let settle and then suck it out of there. Filtration would be OK, but these pumps have a limited suction head, and filtration works better if you pump through it rather than try and suck through it. It would take a long heavy lead and a pump down there at the creek to go through a filter pumping it up to the van... Not sure it is worth the effort, although I have often designed it in my mind. I use 2- 20 litre two handed stainless boiling pots that I carry, that double in use for prawns or mud crab or something I might stumble on.
The short answer is let the water settle a minute and suck out a little ways above the bottom. And the filter on the pump is a simple twist off O-ring sealed unit like a swimming pool pump... Regards, LR
FollowupID:
846016
