App. E: How to Make a Homemade Piston Pump

• How to Make and Use a Homemade Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump THE NEED Ventilating pumps-mostly centrifugal blowers capable of operating against quite high resistance to airflow-are used to force outdoor air through most high-protection-factor fallout shelters and through almost all permanent blast shelters....  • Table 1. Comparison of Plyw...  • CUTTING OUT THE PLYWOOD PARTS 1....  • . Permanently attach t...  • OPERATING THE PUMP 1....

Ventilating pumps-mostly centrifugal blowers capable of operating against quite high resistance to airflow-are used to force outdoor air through most high-protection-factor fallout shelters and through almost all permanent blast shelters. Low-pressure ventilating devices, including ordinary bladed fans and homemade air pumps such as KAPs and Directional Fans, cannot force enough air through a permanent shelter's usual air-supply system consisting of pipes, or of pipes with a blast valve, a filter, and the valves needed to maintain a positive pressure within the shelter.

Manually cranked centrifugal blowers, or blowers that can either be powered by an electric motor or be hand-cranked, are the preferred means of ventilating permanent shelters from Switzerland to China. The main disadvantages of efficient centrifugal blowers are:

Therefore, there is need for an efficient, manually operated, low- cost ventilating pump that:

To produce such a shelter ventilating pump, during the past 20 years I have worked intermittently designing and building several types of homemade air pumps. However, until I was traveling in China as an official guest in October 1982 and saw a wooden double- action piston pump being used, I did not conceive or come across a design that I was able to develop into a shelter-ventilating pump that meets all of the requirements outlined above. Now I have made and tested a simple homemade Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump, described below, that satisfies these requirements. Three other persons have used successively improved versions of these instructions to make this model, and several others have contributed improvements.

Fig. 1 pictures the box-like test model described in these instructions.

Fig. 2 illustrates a vertical section through a slightly improved model, and shows the 12x12-in. plywood piston being pushed from right to left, causing air from the outdoors to be "sucked" down the open air-supply duct in the top of the pump, then down to the right through the open valve in the airtight frame (that is above and near the right end of the PARTITION), and on down into the lower- pressure area behind the leftward-moving piston.

Because the air to the right of the leftward-moving piston is at a lower pressure than the air in the shelter room, the exhaust valves in the front end (the handle end) of the pump are held closed.

During this half of the pumping cycle, the higher-pressure air in the part of the pump's square "cylinder" to the left of the leftward-moving piston opens the air-exhaust valves in the back end of the pump, and fresh air is forced out into the shelter room, The higher-pressure air to the left of the valve in the airtight frame (that is above the left end of the PARTITION) keeps this valve closed, while the lower-pressure air to the right of this valve helps keep it closed.

When the piston is pulled to the right, all of the valves shown closed are quickly opened, and all shown open are quickly closed. Then fresh air is forced into the shelter room through the opened exhaust valves in the front end of the pump.

The volumetric and durability tests summarized below are proof that this homemade Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump is better than most hand-cranked centrifugal blowers for supplying a shelter with outdoor air through typical air-intake and exhaust pipes- especially when the ventilation system contains a filter and/or blast valves. The filters that give the best protection, Chemical Biological Radiological (CBR) Filters, have quite high resistance to airflow, as do commercial blast valves that close quickly enough to protect filters.

Because the rapidly pulsating airflows into and out of a piston pump are very hard to measure accurately with an air velocity meter, I made an inflatable cylindrical bag of 2-mil (0.002 inch) polyethylene film; the fully inflated volume of this bag was 256 cubic feet. The bag was suspended on a horizontal strong cord running through its length. A short tube 62 inches in circumference connected the back end of the pump (that is opposite the operator's end) to the suspended bag. Bag and pump were in a below ground shelter that normally has essentially motionless air. See Fig. 1.

Since this type of pump exhausts equal volumes of air from each of its two ends, the total cubic feet per minute (cfm) that it pumps equals twice the cfm that it exhausts into the shelter from one of its ends. See Fig. 1, that shows the pump attached with "C" clamps to a small steel table and being used to pump air into the 256 cubic foot suspended bag.

I measured the pressure differences against which the pump was operated. In a shelter these differences typically are caused by the resistance to airflow in pipes, valves, and a filter. I measured pressure differences in inches water gauge (1 in. w.g. 0.036 psi) with the small-tube manometer attached to the side of the pump. To produce various pressure differences for several tests, I nailed a piece of plywood over the top of the air-intake duct, so as to produce different sized openings: in most tests I placed different layers of filter materials in a filter box that was fitted airtight over the 6 x 6-in. air-supply duct on the top of the pump. See Fig. 3. (This low-resistance filter removes practically all fallout particles of wartime concern, and also most infective aerosols that may be used in biological warfare. See "Making and Using a Homemade Filter Box and Filter", by Cresson H. Kearny, October 1985.

The best centrifugal blowers that I have seen or heard about are those manufactured by a Finnish company, Temet Oy. (I cranked a Temet Oy blower in an Israeli shelter used for testing ventilation equipment: the Finnish centrifugal blower was better than Swiss, German and captured Russian blowers also undergoing tests.) Therefore, in Table 1 a few of the volumetric tests of my best model Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump (powered by one and two men) are compared with performance data furnished by Temet Oy for its centrifugal blower when cranked by two men. I have converted Temet Oy's metric units into the common American units.
In Table 1 the pressure difference of 4.3 inches water gauge is the resistance to airflow that Temet Oy realistically gives as typical of a well designed shelter ventilation system of pipes, valves and blower plus a Chemical Biological Radiological (CBR) filter. Temet Oy gives 2.0 inches water gauge as typical of the same ventilation system with only a low resistance dust filter. The much larger volume pumped by the Double-Action Piston Pump when a CBR filter is used (as compared to the cfm pumped by this very good centrifugal blower) is typical of the reduced effectiveness of even the best centrifugal blowers at high pressure differences.

In areas devastated by a nuclear explosion, the typical very dusty conditions are likely to result in filters soon becoming dirty and higher in resistance to airflow. Then the greater effectiveness of a piston pump for ventilating a shelter with a high-resistance air-supply system will be even more important than when its filter is clean.

Table 1. Comparison of Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump with Temet Oy Centrifugal Blower.

The horsepower requirements of my pump have not yet been measured. However, based on the calculated air pressure on the 12 x 12-in. piston of 22.3 lbs. when the pressure difference was 4.3 in. w.g. (0.155 psi), when two pumpers were making 52 strokes (cycles) per minute while pumping 182 cfm, the horsepower delivered was about 0.14 HP without allowing for friction and the losses of power due to reversals in the directions of piston movements. I estimate that the actual horsepower delivered by the two pumpers (I, a 69 year old with a stiff back in 1983, and a 15-year-old boy) was somewhat less than 0.2 HP. A man in good condition can work for hours delivering 0.1 HP.

When comparing machines powered by human muscles, what muscles are used and how they are used are often as important as are the horsepower requirements. Leg muscles are more efficient and are much stronger than arm muscles. Arm muscles are used much more in cranking a blower than in pushing and pulling the piston of a properly designed reciprocating piston pump back and forth horizontally. See Fig. 3. If this double-action piston pump is placed at a height above the floor so that its handle is approximately at the height of a standing operator's elbows, then the operator can do most of the work with his legs. See Fig. 3. He efficiently moves his body back and forth for over a foot, while moving his hands and forearms horizontally for slightly less than a foot relative to his body. To deliver the same horsepower by cranking a blower uses less efficient muscles inefficiently, and is much more tiring.

As shown in Table 2, the volumetric efficiency of my best model is good for a shelter-ventilating pump. The volumetric efficiency of a piston pump (a positive displacement pump) is found by dividing the cfm actually pumped by the theoretical maximum cfm at the same pumping rate and the same pressure difference, assuming all piston strokes are full length, that all valves open and close instantaneously, and that there is no leakage. Table 2 shows that the greater the pressure difference, the lower the efficiency- as one would expect, because of increased leakage.

Table 2. Volumetric Efficiencies of Double-Action Piston Pump Operated by One Man.

Book Page: 263

Finding a homemakeable method to seal the moving piston so as to assure at least one month of continuous efficient pumping was the most difficult problem. Various rubber seals attached to the edges of the piston were unsatisfactory, and aluminum sheetmetal strips (shaped and attached like the galvanized steel sheetmetal strips used in this model) wore out in less than a week, even when oiled every 24 hours.

To save money during weeks of continuous durability testing, the pump was operated by an electric motor that powered a pulley drive that turned a 2-foot-diameter pulley having an attached 40-in.-long steel pitman with a hinged connection to a horizontally- sliding bar connected to the handle of the pump's wooden piston rod. See Fig. 4.

After pumping for 380 hours (15.83 days) at 44 strokes per minute against a pressure difference of 2.3 in. w.g., the worst worn spot on any of the 30-gauge steel sheetmetal sealing strips on the piston was reduced in thickness from its original 0.0155 in. to 0.0145 in. This worst-spot wear of 0.001 in. is only about a 6% reduction in thickness. The flap valves functioned as well as when new, and appeared unworn.

I conclude that this pump would be serviceable after several months of continuous use-provided it is lubricated after every 24 hours of actual use, as in this durability test. In this test I lubricated the piston, its "cylinder's" four walls, and its rod with Lubriplate Ne. 105, "the original whito grease". This non-sticky "grease-type lubricant" is used extensively, especially to lubricate internal combustion engines before first starting up. Another builder of this model pump found Siloo White Lube, an all-purpose lithium grease, the best of the lubricants that he tested. Judging from my' prior durability' tests, a very' light oil applied daily serves reasonably well. Ordinary bearing grease is unsatisfactory.

The following materials (that cost about $65. retail in 1985) are needed to make and operate the best model of this pump:

Look at Figs. 2, 5, and 6. In Figs. Sand 6, the lower, fixed part of the front end is pictured below the piston rod. The piston rod slides back and forth on the center of the fixed part of the front end (as indicated more clearly in Fig. 7), and in the notch in the removable part of the front end.

Note that a single plastic-film flap covers each pair of 2 x 4-in. valve holes, and that, as shown in Fig. 2 (that gives a side view of all six flaps), all flaps open away from the vertical center-plane of the pump.

In Fig. 5 the removable (upper) part of the front end is shown in place, secured by six round-head screws with flat washers. In Fig. 7 note the pair of 2 x 4-in. flap- valve holes above the piston rod.

In Fig. 6. the removable part of the front end has been removed, exposing the 26-in.-long, horizontal PARTITION that serves as the top of the 12 x 12-in. "cylinder", in which the piston can make a 24-in.-maximum- length stroke. Also see Figs. 2 and 7. Fig. 6 also shows the piston while it is being removed and one of the two rubber bumpers (made of inner tube rubber) on its piston rod.

The back end of the "box" is made of one piece of plywood, as shown in Fig. 8. The two plastic flaps of its exhaust valves each cover two 2 x 4-in. valve holes, that are positioned the same as the four valve holes in the front end.

CUTTING OUT THE PLYWOOD PARTS

. Permanently attach the fixed part of the front end X (see Fig. 7, 10 and 12) with adhesive and small nails to the sides and to the bottom. Be sure that its flap valve is upside down and is facing away from the center of the pump, and that a long edge of this part is level with the outer side of the bottom. Remove the construction forms.

14. Paint the interior of the "cylinder" with sealer-after removing all adhesive that may be in its corners.

15. After the sealer dries, sandpaper the interior of the "cylinder" with fine sandpaper, and paint it again with the final coat of sealer.

16. To attach the removable part of the front end XI, stand the "box" on its completely open end and drill slightly oversize screw holes (for your 2-in. screws) clear through the removable part of the front end, as indicated by Fig. 9. With the flap valve facing outward, temporarily attach this part with a few small nails to the end of the top and to ends of the two sides. Then with a smaller-diameter bit, drill the screw holes deep enough into the top and the sides so that the 7 screws will hold securely.

17. So that it will be unnecessary to tightly screw on the removable part of the front end in order to make its repeated temporary attachments airtight, tack felt weather-stripping (best 1/8-in. thick and 5/8-in. wide), or strips made of two thicknesses of flannel, to the contact edges of the top and the sides. No. 3 (3/8-in.) carpet tacks serve well. Then with a razor blade carefully cut the felt covering the screw holes in the edges, and remove these small pieces of covering felt.

18. Attach with screws the removable part of the front end.

19. To prevent damage to the front-end valve flaps when you stand the pump on its front end, epoxy a small piece of 3/8-in. plywood to the front end, near each of its four corners, as pictured in Figs. 3 and 5. Before standing the pump on its front end, use small pieces of masking tape to temporarily secure its valve flaps in their closed positions.

20. Attach the back end XII, using only screws. See Fig. 8. (For repairs, the back end may have to be removed.) To make the attachment of the back end airtight, coat its attachment "crack" only with rubber cement.

OPERATING THE PUMP

Wipe off all grease and other lubricants if you do not plan to use this pump for months. All lubricants-especially those on wood-tend to become gummy with time.

Keepyour supply of pump lubricants taped to your pump.

Suggestions for improving this pump and/or these instructions will be appreciated, and may contribute to improvements likely to save lives.

Cresson H. Kearny

Copyright © 1986 by Cresson H. Kearny

No part of this work (except brief passages that a reviewer may quote in a review) may be reproduced in any form unless the reproduction includes the following statement: "Copyright © 1986 by Cresson H. Kearny. All or part of this information on the Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump may be reproduced without obtaining permission from anyone."

The primary shelter ventilation requirement is to supply enough outdoor air to maintain endurable heat-humidity conditions.

To keep the concentration of respiratory carbon dioxide low enough for survival, very little fresh outdoor air is required. Evenfor an infant or an infirm person remaining in a crowded shelter for days, 3 cubic feet per minute (3 cfm) is adequate. For a healthy adult or child 1.5 cfm is enough. Too much carbon dioxide, not too little oxygen, is the initial cause of unendurable conditions in inadequately ventilated shelters in which the air does not get unendurably hot.

In contrast, up to 25 cfm of outdoor air per occupant may be needed to maintain endurable heat-humidity conditions inside a crowded shelter occupied for days during a heat wave in a hot, humid part of the U.S. Hence the need for a large-volume ventilating pump, best with a low-resistance filter.

If outdoor air flows into a shelter through a hood, gooseneck pipe, or other air-supply opening that causes all but tiny fallout particles to fall out before the air reaches shelter occupants, breathing this unfiltered air will not result in short-term radiation casualties. However, a very small fraction of the occupants of a shelter supplied with unfiltered air in an area of heavy fallout may contract cancer years later as a result of breathing shelter air containing tiny fallout particles, that a properly designed filter could have removed.

Air that has been in contact with fallout particles before being filtered is not radioactive,

The homemade filter illustrated below, if used with an efficient "suction" pump such as the Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump described separately, will remove practically all fallout particles likely to cause casualties even decades later, This filter also will remove most infective aerosols, the air-borne tiny particles used in biological warfare - an unlikely type of attack on the United States. It will not remove poisonous gasses, an even less likely danger to Americans if all-out war befalls us.

If 20 x 20-inch furnace filters are available, use plywood or boards to build the filter box shown in the illustration. To make permanent connections airtight, first use waterproof construction adhesive or glue, and then tape. (If only smaller filters are available, reduce the horizontal dimensions of the box accordingly, except for the top and bottom openings.) Check to be sure that your filters will fit snugly in the box of the size you plan to build.

The square frame on the bottom of the filter box should fit snugly over the square air-intake duct on the top of your Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump. Tape the cracks to make the connection airtight and to permit easy removal of the filter box.

Make the illustrated 4 supports of the hardware cloth no thicker than 3/4 inch, thus providing enough space below the filter for low- resistance airflow. (Hardware cloth is a stiff, square-mesh, molten- dipped galvanized wire.)

Make the square top of the filter box so that it covers the upper edges of the box's sides and can be easily removed. Then cut in its center a round hole slightly smaller than 4 inches in diameter. File the hole's edges so that a 4-inch-diameter can (such as a coffee can with its top and bottom cut out) fits snugly in this hole. To connect the can securely and airtight, first use waterproof construction adhesive or epoxy, and then tape. (If construction adhesive or epoxy is not available, cut a 2-1/2-inch-diameter hole in the center of the bottom of the 4-inch-diameter can. Then make radial cuts spaced about one-half inch apart, out to the full diameter of the can. Bend these tabs outward 180 degrees, preparatory to tacking them with small tacks to the bottom of the filter box top. Tape airtight.)

So that the top of the filter box can be easily removed, tape it onto its box. A roll of duct tape should be kept with the filter box and pump at all times.

To connect the filter box to the shelter's air-intake pipe, the best widely available air duct is the inexpensive, 4-inch-diameter flexible duct used with clothes dryers.

Furnace or air-conditioner dust filters, those made of oiled fiberglass fibers, will remove practically all but the very smallest fallout particles. Filters that are sold in box-like housings can easily be installed so that all the pumped air will pass through them, by taping them to the inner sides of the filter box. The illustration shows two plain mats of furnace filter material, each taped around its edges. (If commercial dust filters are not available, bath towel cloth will serve. However, in very dusty areas a cloth filter may become overloaded, thus seriously reducing the rate of airflow much sooner than if an oiled fiber filter is used as a prefilter.)

To filter out most of the tiny particles that may pass through one or more furnace filters, place two thicknesses of bath towel on top of the filter-support made of hardware cloth, and tape them around their edges to the box. See illustration.

Tests by U.S. Army specialists have shown that filtering air through two thicknesses of bath towel removes about 85 percent of even microscopic aerosols as small as 1 to 5 microns in diameter. (See "Emergency Respiratory Protection Against Radiological and Biological Aerosols", by II. G. Guyton et al., A.M.A. Archives of Industrial Health, Vol. 20, July through Dec. 1959.) This is the size of most infective aerosols used in biological warfare. In most of an area subjected to a biological attack, if 85 percent of this size-range of infective aerosols and practically all larger particles are removed, then most persons breathing this filtered air will not receive enough infective agents to infect and sicken them.

Persons who are especially desirous of protecting their shelter's occupants against biological warfare aerosols, but who can not afford or obtain expensive High Efficiency Particulate Air filters (HE PA filters), should consider using disposable pleated air filters that meet official ASHRAE standards. One 2-in. pleated air filter, measuring 19-1/2 x 19-1/2 in., will remove over 90 percent of particles in the 1.0-5.0 micron range, yet when clean its resistance to an airflow of 200 cfm is only about 0.2 in. water gauge (about 0.007 psi). Its cost is about twice that of a good ordinary furnace filter of the same size. However, it has approximately three times the life of a standard panel type filter before becoming overloaded. Disposable pleated air filters are available in larger cities.

The illustrated homemade filter has such low resistance to airflow that, when up to about 200 cfm is being pumped through it by a Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump, the air volume is decreased by only about 10 percent, as compared to the volume pumped with no filter in the ventilation system. With a homemade Plywood Double- Action Piston Pump, up to approximately 200 cfm can be pumped through this filter even when the total difference in air pressure (caused by the ventilation pipes, a dirty filter, etc. that restrict airflow) is high, about 5 inches water gauge (0.18 psi).

Even if the United States suffers an all-out Soviet attack, only a small part of its area will be subjected to blast effects severe enough to injure the occupants of fallout shelters. (Fallout shelters are not designed to withstand blast, but especially typical earth-covered ones afford consequential blast protection.) In contrast, an installed filter, unless protected by an efficient blast valve, will be wrecked by a quite low-pressure blast wave that comes down its open air-intake pipe -even if the small part of the blast wave that would enter the shelter room through its open ventilation pipes is not nearly powerful enough to injure the shelter occupants. Thus unprotected installed filters will be wrecked in an area several times as large as the area in which occupants of fallout shelters will be injured by blast.

To be sure of having a filter in good condition, you can:

Persons making preparations to improve their chances of surviving an all-out attack should realize that if the United States is hit with warheads the sizes of those in the 1987 Soviet intercontinental arsenal, the fallout particles of critical concern will be much larger than the extremely small particles (1 to 5 microns in diameter) which are not completely removed by this filter. Fallout particles this small produced by large nuclear explosions do not fall to the ground for many days to months after the nuclear explosions, by which time they have become much less radioactive. Essentially all of the larger particles can be removed merely by filtering the air through a few thicknesses of bath towel cloth.

Copyright 1999 Nuclear War Survival Skills