Introduction
In any supply of water that needs to flow through a pump it is necessary to reduce at very least, the largest particles to try to reduce wear and tear on your pump. (This is not intended to filter the water but more of a mechanical cleaning) Our pump did come with an attachment to achieve this nut it was very basic and coarse.
The sieve that we designed was intended for use in the river. It thus had long feet to embed in the river bed and a point for fastening a chain to it , to stop the river removing it when in unexpected flood and anyone else who might want it for themselves or for the scrap value.
A suitable sieve
I started out looking for something reasonably robust with a fine steel mesh and found a cylindrical dustbin. This formed the inner sieve and all design and fabrication took place around this size and shape. The water flowing into this clean area dis not slow significantly because of the sieve
Materials
I used 10mm round bar that I had for the legs and 25mm x 3mm flat bar for the rings. The expanded metal used was the smallest hole size I had.
Fabrication
The hardest part of the build is to make the circles.
This is quite easy if you have a ring roller but otherwise the steel can be bent over a suitably sized pipe or even hammered into shape on an anvil .
I used three hoops top middle and bottom. These were sized on the dustbin that I had.
These were then welded to the legs.
.Once the initial frame was done the expanded metal was then attached to it.
A piece of pipe split in two was added as support for the pump inlet pipe entering the basket and an eye attached for being able to chain/tie the basket in place.
After all the welding a clean-up was done and the basket sieve undercoated and then painted.
This has been in successful use for over a year now. It has been used in the well and the long feet are not as necessary. A modification that could be useful is to have an additional cover on top to ensure debris cant enter the sieve if the water level rises rapidly