Cat Water Fountains and Peristaltic Pumps

We recently stumbled across this article on reddit: 

It would be rude not to have an opinion. 

Problem: 

Cat fur gets caught up in the impeller type pump in the water fountains and clogs them up and they stop working.  

Proposed solution: 

Use peristaltic pump 

Spoiler alert:  

Maybe use a filter instead of a peristaltic pump. It's another thing to clean but with a peristaltic pump you need to change the tubing so the filter is probably is a much cheaper and a better solution ....and you can use a quieter pump type.

 

Love the comment:

"That noise is a deal breaker. My cats would just die from dehydration before they trusted that monster not to kill them."

Yes, peristaltic pumps have a reputation for being noisy.

👉In the video - the pump is connected to a DC brushed motor with a planetary gearbox. They are super cheap but have a tendency to sound like a bag of nails. The alternative is to use a stepper motor without a gearbox (direct-drive) to drive the pump-head.

 

👉With a stepper motor you need a controller to drive it. You can’t connect it straight to a DC power supply like the motor in the video.

 

👉The peristaltic pump-head itself is noisy. Even premium pump-heads that retail for 300 USD + still struggle with noise. The bigger the pump-head the slower you can run it and the less noise is going to make. Go big or go home.

 

👉Food grade peristaltic tubing is super expensive. Other pump types might get clogged up but with a peristaltic pump - you will need to replace the tubing after a certain amount of time. Silicon tubing is most popular and cheap but has a short life - you might be better off using Santoprene/Marprene tubing.

Santoprene will have a longer life then Tygothane tubing. I think both are not a food grade tubing. Silicon tubing will have an even shorter life.

Article on food grade tubing:

https://www.copely.com/guides/food-grade-hose-guide/

The advantage of pumping water is that water is not a "chemically aggressive" substance so you can use almost any material for the peristaltic pump tubing.