MOARC

[Sky-Guy]

MOARC stands for the "Mother Of All River Cannons"

Hey it's my first post and I thought I'd share what I built, a small part of which was inspired by my research done on this website prior to building.

Here in Washington State every year we have a fishing tournament called the Snoopy Rod Classic. It's an invite-only tourney of river guides, fishing industry types, and friends who all fish for Steelhead on the Bogachiel river on the Olympic peninsula with, yes, kids Zebco snoopy rods.

As we are fishing, Potato guns are sounding off, Water cans being fired, Super soakers, all kinds of pranks on other boats, paintball, fireworks, you name it.

This year I needed somethign to really SOAK the competition and make a little fishing room around my boat so here is what I came up with.


I bought a 6.5hp trash pump off ebay for $220. It's 2 inch and pumps an astonishing 220gpm. I affixed a intake over the gunnel on the side of my drift boat using flexible spa hose and PVC joints.

For the "Fire hose" I used 2inch clear flexible braided hose so it could hanlde the PSI. Dual hose clamps on everything, and I had no leakage. Attached a galvanized 2" hose fitting, then a 2" to 5/8's reducer. Done! pretty simple design actually

Performance:
We got about 80-90 feet of water in a 5/8's solid beam that only broke up towards the end, and noone F%#@$!ed with us all day after feeling the power and hearing that bad boy start up!

I'll attach some pictures and a link to video:
Small video from our boat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7sGybKcp7I

Small video from another boat:
http://snappy.fish.washington.edu/movie ... ports1.mov (Quicktime, and Takes a bit to load)

Stills:





Anyway, if you are on the water ( i.e. unlimited supply) this is the only way to go. I can't find where anyone else has done this before, do any of you know or have you seen a similar setup?

Ryley

[Silence]

Wow...that's amazing! More power than any other cannon yet created, so you've set the new record, and I guess the bigger ones are heading to firehose-style brute force. Amazing. Congrats, and welcome to the forums!

Is it powered by an internal combustion engine or something? Once again, congrats.

EDIT: After glancing at the videos, if you're interested in more range, better nozzles could help. Go to http://www.mcmaster.com and search for their plastic fire hose nozzles. A large size conical nozzle, maybe 1/2" or more, should really help eliminate the turbulence in the stream. It's a shame the stream breaks up before the full range is accomplished, and I'm sure it could hit 90-100 feet otherwise. I presume you've already seen Ben's SuperCannon II thread...

[Sky-Guy]

It's a gas pump that I bought off eBay.
Here's a current listing, and the seller is named Salsbury sales in case someone is looking at this >60 days from this post, look their name up on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/WATER-TRASH-PUMP-2- ... dZViewItem

Thanks for the nozzle link. I tried to find something similar in Seattle but I was under a time contsraint during design. I'll check that out and maybe pick one up if my wife doesnt have a coniption first!

[Silence]

Thanks for your link too. I must not have been thinking, it just didn't cross my mind that McMaster-Carr (most of us live on the East Coast and know it's located in New Jersey, most things arrive in a day or two) is too far away for you...pretty much forgot about the whole Washington part.

I think that pump ad says it lifts to 92 feet...don't know if that means it shoots water straight up 92 feet, or something else. Pretty insane anyway, especially without a nozzle. By the way, the nozzles you can get--the plastic ones probably, although there will be a seam inside to sand off--are very cheap.

I'd like to hear a story from somebody about a weapon like this during river gunning--basically rafters who shoot water at each other.

[joannaardway]

When it says it lift water up 92 feet, that tells you what pressure it will achieve.

It works out at about 2.75 bar or 40 psi.

[SSCBen]

Great idea! It's about time someone tried this. I've suggested buying a gas powered pump before to some rafting folks but no one has done it before.

This is exactly why gas pumps are great for rafting. It'd be expensive, but it'd get the job done.

How heavy is the pump setup?

I don't have much time to write so I'll leave it at that for right now... more to come later today.

[Sky-Guy]

Hey Guys,
The pump weighs roughly 50-60 pounds on a full tank. Real easy to start and self-primes in about 5 seconds, then the flow really picks up. The one I bought isn't *too* loud, and runs really nicely.

What is 2.75 bar?

BTW- they advertise this pump at 188gpm but it came with a factory revision sticker on it that said 220.

[Silence]

2.75 bar is 275,000 Pascals, so 275,000 Newtons per square meter. And joannaardway, thanks for clearing that up...I probably wouldn't have convinced myself of a meaning for that statement otherwise.

I think I recall Ben suggesting a system like this, but I doubt the people he was addressing actually meant to build one. Great job, and I look forward to seeing what Ben writes!

[SSCBen]

It took until a weekend for me to have time to write this... but at least I'm here. Sorry for the late reply.

What I mainly wanted to say earlier was that it is about time someone tried this!

Earlier I had suggested something like this because it has great potential and is perfect for river rafting. I suppose the person I suggested it to didn't take it too seriously... hopefully this example would help them take it seriously.

A new nozzle will help your stream. I'd suggest buying part number 6424T62 from http://www.mcmaster.com/ . Plastic fire hose nozzles are cheap and readily available. The long cone shape helps ease the water into a stream for less turbulence. For this setup you will need to fashion a 2 inch to 1 1/2 inch converter, but that's fairly simple.

This nozzle likely will increase your range, but the orifice diameter is 1/2 inch, which is less than your current 5/8 inch diameter. I would suggest if the range is less to drill a larger diameter. If the output is lowered substantially as well by using the nozzle, you might want to drill the nozzle larger as well. Then again, 1/2 inch is a pretty big nozzle, so either likely isn't necessary.

As for this having a sort of "record" for water distance... it's in a different class completely and certainly doesn't have the record. I've seen similar, but definitely more powerful pumps get ranges of over 100 feet with ease (on a website about fire hose nozzle testing). Older fire truck designs that used manual labor could get over 150 feet of range. A main part (at least implied) of my earlier range challenge was that the water gun would be a single-piece unit that is carryable and can be operated by a single person. Of course, I suppose if you like carrying the pump and a small water supply this might qualify, but that would be heavy at best. Though, due to the obvious advantage such designs have, I would simply say this is ineligible for that challenge because it wouldn't be a challenge then.

That's actually why I asked how heavy the pump was. I wanted to see if these pumps could be used in a carryable water gun... they seem too heavy for such use. Great for rafting though. In fact, I don't know what would be better.

If you don't mind Sky-Guy, can I have permission to use this on my website? This is something that's too good to keep to the forums. If you could write a guide to getting a water pump ready for river rafting that would be even better.

[Sky-Guy]

I don't mind you using it at all. I'll take some better pictures of the pump sitting in my boat that will show how the intake sits and what I used for the discharge..... Maybe sometime this weekend.

One could easily put together the same setup for river rafting, you would just have to customize your intake to your watercraft.

[Silence]

I recall something being said about a river-gunning section of the site...and this would fit perfectly.

I had interpreted the 70-foot challenge to extend to any gun that was homemade, even if most of it was a single motorized pump. Because admittedly, even SuperCannon II isn't all too battle-practical, as it only contains one shot's worth of water and would take a lot of time to pump up. But still, I see what you're saying...

[adronl]

I remember the exact same or similar setup at summer camp when I was 14 it was provided by the local fire department they use them to combat brush fires near the lakes where I live