[dice]

(Re: priming a centrifugal pump)

Those ultra-cheap, non-submersible centrifugal
pumps do need to be primed to work. The person
that owned the one I saw in action said he just
bent the flexible inlet hose up, filled it with water,
pushed it back down into the water that he intended
to pump, and turned it on.

I don't know how that would work with a filter
on the end of the inlet (especially well screen
buried in gravel). You would probably need
something like a hose quick-connect in between
the inlet side of the pump and the filter, then
connect the filter to the inlet hose after the pump
is running.

That is not nearly as convenient as a self-priming
pump or submersible pump, but I don't know where
you can get one of those for $30-40. If you pile rocks
too big to pass through the inlet around a submersible
sewage pump, you can probably get away without using
a filter at all.

I understand not wanting to make a big investment
in something that you only need during a drought
in summer.

Something that I've never seen anywhere: a wick
in a pipe, some material that absorbs water stretched
through a pipe that you can run all the way from the
swamp to your gardens. Once it gets completely wet,
it will conduct water via capillary action, like a towel
with one end in a sink full of water dripping it out onto
the floor. (The pipe is to keep it from evaporating
before it gets to the garden end.)

I don't know what the flow rate would be, though.
It might all evaporate as it comes out the end of
the wick. Maybe stick the end down into mulch?

Maybe we are looking at this all wrong, and the
thing to do is move the garden to the swamp,
like the Aztecs did (floating islands of reeds and
compost with veggies on top).