Fed up with hauling and pouring liquids? Want a reliable pump to make life easier?
Want it simple, affordable and easy to make? Then keep watching.
Hi YouTube, my name’s Geoff and today I'm going to be looking at how to build a simple
PVC pump. Now I specifically wanted to move vegetable oil from containers like this, but
this pump design will easily handle water or other suitable liquids.
I've tried a lot of cheap pumps, such as drill pumps and syphon pumps, but I found these
didn't work that well. I wanted something specific to my needs.
I found two really helpful videos on YouTube… The first is by Grant Thompson, and this is
an excellent tutorial – well worth watch. The second is by Philip Stephens, and his
simple engineering approach was the real inspiration for my design, but I owe a lot to Grant as
well as you’ll see as this video goes on. Now Grant’s design is probably technically
better than Philip’s or mine, but it uses rubber O-rings. Rubber and veg oil don’t
get on and the style of this pump didn't match my needs either.
Phil’s design was exactly what I was looking for, though he clearly was concentrating on
moving large volumes of water and low-tech parts.
To meet my needs, to create a PVC pump that shifted an impressive amount of oil but still
slotted easily with the mouth of an average cubie, I was able to take elements of both
these designs and come up with this one… … and it works an absolute treat. I nicknamed
it, the Ping Pong Pump because, as the name suggests, it uses a ping pong ball to create
a check valve. Hopefully this animation I've created should
explain everything. You can see the table tennis ball at the bottom there acting as
a check valve. There’s another check valve on the piston - the handle that goes up and
down. It’s basically about two opposing check
valves working in opposite directions and the vacuum created in between.
So let’s get on with the build. With this pump it’s all about the table
tennis ball. It’s all about the dimensions of the ball with is exactly 40mm. It shouldn't
fit down the pipe – but it should be a close thing.
Here’s a list of the parts I used to build this.
Everything is UK spec because that’s where I am. You international guys should be governed
by the size of the table tennis ball. Internationally this is a standard size, 40mm. That’s about
1.5 inches, but what that translates to in pipe fittings where you are I can’t be sure.
So get a ping pong ball, head off down your hardware store and get the fittings to match.
Here’s the reducer which goes into the connector nice and snugly.
The ping pong ball will disappear in the connector. But it will be a perfect fit on the reducer.
Look… that’s a nice tight fit… a wonderful check valve.
We need to remove the looks in the connector. You can use a file or a Dremmel tool.
There you go. All smoothed out. Then we use solvent cement to connect them
together. Don’t push the reducer all the way it… only a little. Just enough so that
it grips really. We need the extra space inside the connector.
There we go the balls inside the connector. And there’s our check valve.
It’s as easy as that. Now, you can see the ball doesn't fit in the
tube, but the connector does fit over it. So we put the ball back inside our new fitting
and slot it onto the pipe. There’s the ball inside. We want to push the fitting on leaving
only a small gap for the ball to move – but it must be able to move.
Then we mark it with a pencil. Now here I've marked it with tape.
On this side of our check valve we don’t want the ball to form a good seal. So we need
to remove some of the material – just a little. With that done liquids can flow passed
the ball. Now we cement on our connector making sure
the ball has a little movement. And then our check valve is complete.
If you watched Phil’s video, you’ll see he made his plunger out of wood. I wanted
to use plastic as I think it will work better. I took an off cut from the pipe and heated
it using a hot air gun. I'm going to fast forward this as it takes
a good minute or so. Do remember when you’re heating plastic,
do it in a well ventilated area and where gloves as the plastic gets hot.
In a moment I'm going to flatten this pipe. The plastic is really pliable at this point.
Just a touch more heat… Now I’ll take this piece of wood and squash
it. Using both hands, press firmly for about a minute, allowing the plastic to cool.
After that the plastic is straight and rigid. Using a
hole saw that’s just a little bigger than the diameter of the pipe, cut out a couple
of plastic disks. Here’s one. It is too big for the pipe at
the moment. An easy way to reduce the size of it and keep
it circular is to place a bolt through in and put the bolt in a drill. Then spin the
drill round and touch it to some sand paper until you eventually get a perfect fit.
This one is too snug, but you get the idea. I repeated this process twice more until I
had 6 piece of plastic. I glued them all together and look what a nice plunger that makes.
That’s just right. Not too tight that it drags and not too loose that it rattles.
Here’s the penny washer that will form the check valve part of the plunger.
Again it’s too big so using the same process, shove it in the drill and file it – or use
an angle grinder if you feel brave enough. We should end up with the penny washer being
just slightly smaller than the plunger. With a nut added to the bolt, the washer can’t
lie flush. So we need to increase the size of the hole in the washer using a step drill.
There you go. That’s increased in size. Now that slots over the top and fits flush
on the plunger again. Take a second washer that’s smaller than
the first. That goes on top of the nut. Then we put another nut on top of that.
And there’s the makings of our check valve! Getting the idea? The large penny washer can
move around freely. So if we take our plunger and drill some holes
in it, that will let the liquid through. Which is what we want – sometimes… but sometimes
we don’t. And that’s where this large washer comes into play.
This will stop any liquid… … let it through…
… stop it, see what I mean? So we now put the other washer back on…
put the nut on top… and you can see we have the makings of our check valve.
All we need to do now is attach it to a piece of dowel.
Here’s the dowel… … and there it is attached. There’s our
plunger check valve all completed. Moving on to the body of the pump now, the
pipes can be cut to match your specific needs. Don’t neglect the head section. This is
important for the operation of this style of pump as it retains some of the fluid and
allows for a constant flow. The fittings are connected using solvent cement.
Here you can see the reducer that allows for the outlet pipe.
There’s a connector that goes on to the head section that allow for an access cap.
This access cap will be the lid of out pump. This one’s got a rubber seal at the top.
I’ll remove this with a screwdriver. We’re going to reinforce the cap to make
it a bit stronger. So make a couple more plastic disks and glue these into the cap, making
sure that they’re smaller than the diameter of the pipe, otherwise it won’t fit.
We bore a hole the size of our dowel and there we have a finished cap.
Place this onto the body and we've virtually got a finished pump.
However, the piston is bottomed out right now. The plunger is touching the ball at the
bottom. This is a bad practice. So we need to make a STOP to prevent this
from happening during operation. I just used a piece of 22mm pipe. It was a
little too large so I removed a thin section. Then I glued and screwed it. I used two part
epoxy adhesive. Whilst it’s drying, using a hole saw, a
scrap piece of wood and our drill method, we can make a nice handle for the pump.
The dowel’s been trimmed down here. I've added a screw for support.
In the handle I've let in a small rebate to fit over the dowel. A perfect fit.
And there it is… our PVC pump all finished. Does it work… yes. Works a treat.
Here’s my son Michael. He’s at an awkward angle and it’s the first time he’s ever
done this. But you can see the pump is really shifting some fluid.
He’s going at a slow, steady pace. Probably at that pace he’ll likely move 20 litres
in a couple of minutes or so. It doesn't look very fast here, but you’d
be surprised. There’s quite a bit of fluid coming out.
Poor Michael. He’s only 13. I dragged him away from his Xbox to do this and I haven’t
exactly made it simple. Thanks Michael. You’re a good lad!
And that’s your lot. We’re all done. You've got a working, affordable pump that you can
customise to your own needs. There are a couple of points and tips worth
mentioning about this particular style of pump.
Firstly, this is a liquid pump – that’s why it has a head section. You could modify
it to pump air if you added rubber O-rings to the plunger, but quite honestly you’d
be better off sticking with Grant’s design if an air pump is what you’re after.
Secondly, there is a little leakage at the very top of these pumps. Because of the head
section, the plunger rod itself gets covered in liquid. When you pull the handle up, raising
the plunger, most of the rod is drawn through the lid of the pump where some of the liquid
can drip or splash off. It’s nothing major, more an inconvenience really. You can minimise
this by making the hole in the lid as close to the diameter of the plunger rod as possible.
But remember you will need some clearance otherwise you’ll get excessive friction
and of course you also need air behind the fluid, so if you did this you might find you’d
need to drill small vent holes. Personally I just hold a piece of scrap cloth around
the body of the pump and catch the drips. It’s still way more convenient than pouring
after all. Another tip here is the fact that after you've
finished pumping, it’s important to remember there’s still liquid inside your pump. You’ll
feel the weight of this at the time. Some liquid is trapped above the ping pong ball
and some is still inside the head section. Over a handy bucket or container, simply press
and hold the ball upwards for a few seconds to release the trapped content there and you
can undo the access cap and remove the plunger to free what’s left inside the rest of the
pump. One final tip, particularly for your veg oil
guys… Veg oil is strange stuff. When it dries it can become sticky like glue. This
will certainly stop the ball moving if you leave the pump dirty and unattended for any
length of time. My advice is simple – when you've finished with it, empty out as much
oil as the can. Then take a few litres of white spirit or even diesel and pump this
through the pump in the usual way. This will dilute any oil still left in the pump. I tend
to keep a container of white spirit just for this job. I make several passes then pour
it all back in the container for use next time. Finally I break the pump apart, wipe
everything clean with paper towels, and the pump is ready for use another day.
So that’s it. I can’t think of any more tips.
If you do have any questions about this project, do feel free to drop me a line. I always maintain
I'm no expert, but I'm happy to help where I can.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, give me a thumbs up and like this video. Drop me a comment
below and ideally subscribe – that would be great. If you didn't like this video, then
why not drop me a line and say why… perhaps I can improve upon it.
I've got about 30 videos out there now I think, so do look out for those on my YouTube channel.
If you’re interested in the subject of veg oil motoring, then have a look at my website
www.vegoilcar.co.uk which tells the story of how I got into veg oil driving.
So once again, that’s it folks. I hope you enjoyed this video, and thanks for watching.