Breurram (Hydro ram)

A water ram is a gravity fed pump that uses the waterhammer effect to pump up a little bit of water using a bigger flow of water, commonly used in areas where flowing water is abundant but a different power supply is not (like in rivers, or fast flowing creeks)

Water rams can be obtained commercially and the WOT has a few different models of them that can be demonstrated.

The breurram is a version of a water ram made from standard parts in a way that makes local repairs or production possible.
In 1996 WOT volunteer Gert Breur designed a water ram: the Breur ram. This ram is developed for small-scale applications.

You can install the water ram yourself with very cheap and easily available parts. The costs for the parts of the ram in the Netherlands are around €70.

The water ram has remarkably high efficiency. If 600 liters of water is supplied from a height of 1 meter, 60 liters of water are brought to a height of 7 meters. This is an efficiency of 70%. However, due to the ram’s small size, this takes a long time, about 130 minutes. Because a water ram runs 24 hours a day, without extra costs or supervision, this should not be a problem.

You can find the publication of the technical description in English, or in Spanish (Dutch is also available on request)

The WOT has also made a YouTube video on the Breur ram where we also go into the physics that make this type of pump work.