Hand Winches Make Low Cost Gate Tighteners

Hand Winches Make Low Cost Gate Tighteners FENCING Miscellaneous 28-6-42 Discarded hand winches off old machinery can be used to make low-cost gate tighteners. I bolt the winch onto a fence rail and then run cable to the top end of the gate post. I've made improvements to the home-built floating paddle pump previously featured in FARM SHOW (Vol. 26, No. 6). The system uses the power of the flowing water to pump water from a creek to drinking troughs in adjacent pastures. It uses 12-ft. long, 12-in. dia. pvc pipes as pontoons. The flowing water powers a small piston pump that lifts water through a 1-in. dia. buried plastic pipe, lifting it 70 ft. and pushing it for a half mile or more to tanks in distant pastures. The tanks are made of old industrial tires mounted on concrete pads. At 1 1/2 gallons per minute, my paddle pump can easily supply 100 head. (Orrin Hart, Claresholm, Alberta)

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