Heron's Fountain

[TinselKoala]

I used a lot of hot glue on my first one too. It works well for prototyping, and is removable if you are careful, which is a real plus. A flexible bond that can be quite strong. As with any adhesive the key is in the surface preparation.

It would be great if Magluvin's schematic worked !

The only way for water to get into the bottom reservoir in the original model should be from the upper cup. If the cup empties too fast then there is probably a gas leak somewhere. And you should try to use the minimum amount of starting water, I think, because all the water that goes into the cup winds up in the bottom reservoir, so you don't want it to fill too fast and leave a lot of water "hanging" in the upper reservoir. I've tried flow restrictors in the cup output; this can help, but now I'm just using thinner ID tubes:  I have about a mile of drip irrigation line that has been just taking up space.

Extending the distance between the bottom two bottles increased the output pressure on my version 2. I can pump 13 1/2 inches of head above the cup outlet nozzle.

[Pirate88179]

TK:

Ah, i see.  The thing that impressed me, beside the water shooting up higher than where it started, was that my top cup (tupperware type bowl) when partially filled to start it...it remains at the same level during the entire process.  It neither fills nor empties.

So, if we had a 6' tall fountain, with larger storage bottles, the head would be higher and the flow would last longer?  I saw youtube vids where they were using 2 litter bottles for this whereas I used 16 oz bottles.

I was thinking about adding a fill port to the top starting bottle and placing a partially filled balloon on the nozzle.
This would be in an effort to add additional storage to it for longer operations.


Bill

[TinselKoala]

It's the increased pressure... air pressure in the normal model.... in the top bottle that forces the water up the fountain. So I think the less flexible this container the better, and there may be some advantage to having this be a wide shallow container instead of a tall bottle; at least I think I've seen some drawings to this effect; haven't tried it though. There are some geometry problems here! I think the airspace here should be small but how do you avoid it increasing as the bottle empties?
But for sure, the spacer bottle between the bottom and the middle worked for me, and the way I've got my lids and plumbing arranged I can put it in or leave it out, either way. I think it is the difference between the heads in the top and the bottom bottles that drives the thing, so even in a tall one you still want to keep the bottom head as low and the top head as  high as possible... I think.

[Magluvin]

Was thinking the same thing

Shallower and wide. The only reason I came to that conclusion is that it brings the level of the water being sent up the fountain closer to the fountain opening, so less pressure to get a rise out of it.  So some efficiency would come of it. And wider, more volume to run longer.

MaGs

[conradelektro]

Heron's fountain is mind-boggling. Of course, there is an explanation, but one has to think hard when seeing it the first time. The deceiving part is the very slow use of the water. If one does not look long enough, the refilling seems to work.

It was very clever of the now often wet coala TK to bring Heron's fountain up in the discussion of the mrwayne contraption. I suspect that such a mind boggling effect arises with the many "concentric risers". A "storage tank" above the machine could drive the thing for a while.

Many things catch my attention, but I just can not bring myself to play with this. May be it is the "wetness" of such experiments.

Sorry for the useless contribution, just musing why mrwayne is doing what he is doing, strange, stranger and strangest,

Conrad