iSoaker.net :: Soaking the world!

Hey everybody! Recently I decided to brush the dust off of that part of my brain that is dedicated to all things homemade (probably due to a subconscious response to the fantastic summer weather here). My goal was to design and build an APH that was smaller, and more practical than earlier designs, without sacrificing too much power. The project is still a WIP, but I've managed to finish general construction, and even test it out. My main issues currently involve perfecting the pump design and playing around with the nozzles. I'm documenting the process in my new blog The Workbench (http://diy-freak.blogspot.com/). I'm planning on updating there once a day for the next two or three days with my process (and LOTS of pictures).

And because I love all you Soakerdom people so much, I'll give you a jump on everybody else with a sneak peek of the (semi) finished product:


Soak On!

Good to see you around again; welcome back.

Pumps are generally the most troublesome aspect of homemades, at least they have been so for me. If you're using manufactured pumps (say from a broken or cheap water blaster), you should have little trouble getting it to seal if it's around 1/2" and fits in 1/2" Sch 40. As for nozzles, I almost completely stopped using drilled endcaps after discovering just how much better lamination you can get from a well-made water balloon filler. Even hose barbs do a considerably better job than drilled endcaps. The balloon filler I used was about 8mm, hooked up to my fairly weak CPH (which only had two layers of LRT and was about as difficult to pump as a CPS 1000 or so) and I got at least CPS 2000 range thanks to the superior lamination of the nozzle. Oh, and plus I can easily fill water balloons with it.

The picture isn't showing up here but it does on SSC. Check the url, or I could fix it for you. In the meantime, I'll post about the design at SSC.

Hmm, the picture seems to work for me; I used the same link both here and at SSC.

In the past, I've used stock pumps to power my homemades, but I really wanted to make a good homemade pump for this project. One solution that seemed to work pretty well was a modified wine-cork attached to a wooden dowel. As far as nozzles are concerned, I agree that drilled end caps are definitely not the right approach. I'll be looking into some alternatives and will let you guys know what I come up with.

Well the picture's definitely working here now. At the time I posted however, it wouldn't show up here but worked fine on SSC (and I refereshed several times to check).

I've heard of quite a few ways to create pump seals, haven't heard of using a cork. How exactly would that work? Would the cork itself be the seal or would you use it to attach O-rings? (My guess is the former since O-rings tend to be problematic.)

I'm not aware of any other alternatives to nozzles at the moment though I'm sure you could come up with something that works.