In this example the reciprocating piston is driven back and forth by a rotating mechanism.

This piston pump uses suction to raise water into the chamber. The lower valve can be placed below water level.

The piston must be within about 25 feet of the water level, but the water can then be raised quite high.

(This is an 16-frame animation, converted to animated GIF format and then super-compressed for Internet transmission. (Note: On some Internet browsers it may be displayed much less smoothly than the CD-ROM version, where the frames are timed to a thousandth of a second.))