# Sump Pump Trash Can Pop Up



## spinman1949 (Jun 29, 2009)

It has been awhile, but some may remember the discussion of using a sump pump to make a pop up.

Well here it is. I am using my self made remote control to activate it. This countrol also controls my garage hoist. I designed it so I could use it for various purposes. The hoist control was a bit trickier than I thought.


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## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

Cool!!


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## Nathan2485 (Oct 27, 2012)

Nicely done....some really cool ideas here!


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## Pumpkin5 (Aug 8, 2010)

:jol:Wow! Very cool prop! Are you going to creep up the garbage can? How funny would it be to have a "Zombie-fied Oscar the Grouch" prop coming out of the trash can? That would be so funny...and yet....oddly fascinating. I love this guy...you did a great job figuring out the mechanics. (Any thoughts of a tutorial after Halloween?) Hint, hint.....


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## spinman1949 (Jun 29, 2009)

*How to.*

Great idea on the Oscar Zombie. No time this year. And yes I will take the unit apart and show everyone how it is constructed. Likely some will come up with some ideas for improvement. That is what I love about these forums. No matter how well a prop is designed, there is always room for improvement.


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## Lunatic (Oct 3, 2006)

Neat mechanism Spinman! It works great. Thanks for sharing.


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## HomeyDaClown (Oct 3, 2009)

Nice alternative to pneumatics. 

I know sump pumps can generate good PSI an at such a low lift it otta work great.

Now I'll have to get out a couple popup sprinklers and play. Wondering if you tried that avenue. I have one that pops up 12" but never thought to plug the end and tie anything to it.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Neat prop - though with the price of sump pumps - I think sticker shock might be the most scary part! Homey does hint at an interesting alternative, though...if you don't mind dumping a gallon of water or so each time the prop fires, you might be able to hook to tap water ...like a sprinkler ...and just run a garden hose to the prop and use a 12V valve to trigger the 'on' state and the water filling the cylinder is drained on the ground when off.


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## spinman1949 (Jun 29, 2009)

Pricey yes. I did get this pump for a $ 1 on ebay. $ 12 shipping. And I had to order a $1 part to fix it. The PVC cost much more. 

And yes the pop up sprinkler head will work as long as you use line water pressure. You need a biggger bore for the sump pump to lift anything. 

It is not exactly a practical prop in some ways, but I wanted to see if it could be done. On another forum a member stated there is a DVD that offers a pump driven pop up out of flourescent water. 

One thing this does open up? Pneumatic giant cheep cylinders. Think what you could lift with a 2 1/2 inch PVC cylinder. Keep the pressure low at say 20lbs and you can still lift nearly 100 lbs. Plus you can make it as long as you want.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

You could have a lot of fun putting that out at the curb on trash pickup day


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## HomeyDaClown (Oct 3, 2009)

You can get sump pumps pretty cheap and even rebuilds, Harbor Freight has em on sale oll the time. It would just recycle the same water over and over. I have a sump from HF that has a garden hose connector so it would easily adapt to a popup sprinkler. Since the piston is already in there should be easy to make it as long as you want.

As for the garbage man, I bet they'd get a kick out of it....look Joe there's something in that can!


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## spinman1949 (Jun 29, 2009)

Homey,

How big is the piston in a pop up sprinkler? That will determine how much you can lift.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Ah, well $14 total for the pump is not bad. Guess I was remembering my last trip to the hardware store...seemed like they were running $100+ for even a tiny one. Or if a person happened to have a spare pump around.... either way, pretty novel idea.


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## niblique71 (Dec 2, 2009)

Love the Concept. Another "Tool" for us Haunters


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## HomeyDaClown (Oct 3, 2009)

Spinman,

I would have to ruin it to find out but the base housing is 2" in diameter so I assume that the piston is somewhere around 1½".

I did a search and also found a few telecoping popup designs. I only mentioned the popup sprinklers because they are really cheap like $7 and already to go for the most part.

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090140074


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## DreadKnightswife (Oct 16, 2011)

what type/size sump pump did you use?


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## spinman1949 (Jun 29, 2009)

*Sump Pump*

1 HP pump. Bid on ebay.

It is a neat prop, but it is more of a challenge to see if it can be done then a true practical approach. At best it will lift maybe 15 lbs. Get a washing machine solenoid valve and use regular water pressure and you will get a faster reaction I feel. Of course water will be wasted and you will need a second valve to control the return flow. You can control with one solenoid. Wire the return valve to common and normally closed and the trigger valve to common and normally open. When you trigger the prop the valve connected to water pressure will supply the piston pop up cylinder. When you kill the trigger the return valve will open and the trigger valve will close. Thus allowing the cylinder to collapse and you can port the water to some bushes with a hose.


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## Onewish1 (Aug 4, 2012)

pretty neat


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## DreadKnightswife (Oct 16, 2011)

Ok so hubby and I tried this with dismal results the first few times but we took another look at the video and the mechanisim and started from scratch and tried again. BTW Thanks for your pointers Spinmann1949! And we got lift off! We have 2 sump pumps we bought at harbor freight a 1/3 hp and a 1 hp. We manager to get lift off with about 30 lbs with the 1/3 hp pump with this mechanisim. Its not a cheap build but neither is buying a moving prop from the store and you get to say I made that myself! We are planning on having 2 "jumping" props with our pumps and our props will go from 3 ft to over 6 ft in a matter of a second or two. When we get video I will post a link!


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## DreadKnightswife (Oct 16, 2011)

here is the link to our version. We are still working on our aliens that are going to pop up out of the corn patch, We plan on using some hacked motion sensor lights to trigger each one individually.


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## DreadKnight (Aug 10, 2011)

*Sump pump jumping Predator*

The wife and I used our sump pump to make predator jump from 4 to 7 foot


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## GOT (Apr 17, 2007)

Very cool.


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## DreadKnightswife (Oct 16, 2011)

Finally got some working video, We have a couple kinks to work out still, need to get a spring for the bottom of the piston so it doesn't hit so hard at the bottom, although the loud bang might get a few scares in and of it's self!


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## FastEddie33 (Aug 16, 2013)

Very nicely done!!


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