This is a post I have been thinking about off and on for a while. I just finished up the foot pedal part of it tonight and thought this would be a great time to document the whole project. I certainly did not invent this design. I referenced some that friends of mine have built, and an instructable. Here is my design slightly improved and very functional.
If I can I would like to do a construction drawing of this sink but if this text is still here I have not finished it yet.
Materials:
2 foot length of copper tubing.
8 – 10 feet of plastic tubing that fights tightly on the copper.
1 Pipe flange, I used galvanized.
1 Pipe nipple of the correct height for your sink.
1 Pipe Reducer, try to get as close to the size tubing you used.
1 Boat fuel pump priming bulb.
4 Hose clamps.
4 Self tapping metal screws.
Duct or Gorilla tape.
Mug or Clean Rock.
Scrap wood.
Door Hinge.
Below is the upper part of the sink. Basically, I screwed the pipe flange into the sink base. Either use self tapping screws, or drill holes first. I then screwed the pipe nipple and reducer together. It sat on the sink while I ran all of the tubing down below. I wrapped a small piece of tape around the copper tubing to hold it in place.
Closer image of the reducer, pipe nipple, base and the tape around the copper tubing.
Down below we can see the drain bucket in the front. Both sinks drain into this bucket. In the back is the clean water bucket. You can see the front tubing coming out of the clean bucket and going through a hole in the cabinet base. Inside the bucket the hose is zip tied to a coffee mug to keep it from floating. In the back the tubing is headed up to the upper assembly, where it is attached to the copper tubing with a hose clamp.
Below is a close up image of the hole that leads from the clean bucket to the primer bulb.
Below is a closeup of the tubing attached to the upper copper tubing.
Below is the two holes in the kick plate of the cabinets. The primer pump is directional so make sure to hook the clean water to the input and then hook the copper tubing to the output. Use two hose clamps to attach the two lengths of tubing to the primer pump.
I built this peddle out of scrap wood, pocket screws and a door hinge. Pocket holes are certainly not necessary. Glue, or screwing from the underside would be fine as well. I just had all the pocket hole stuff from the cabinets and it is really easy. The door hinge is mounted on the bottom to create a peddle.
The peddle from a different angle.
Entire cost of this project is less than $30. These boat pumps can be bought at most full size hardware stores. You are more likely to find one at an ACE rather than a big box store. You would certainly find one at any store that sells boating or marine supplies.
The best way to get the right parts is to take some measurements of what you have to work with, how high you would like the “spout”, and general sink cabinet layout. Head to the hardware store and start putting the parts together until you have what you need and all the tubing parts fit together. I did it this way and it worked out really well.
