First you need a check valve on the bottom of the pickup hose in the lake.
Then you should be able to pull the plug at the pump inlet and fill with
water until the pickup hose is full. I would plumb in a valve right there at
the pump outlet so that you could fill up some 5 gal. buckets once the pump
is running and keep them at the pump for future priming. In the fall you
would need to open up that check valve and let the water run out of the hose
so it doesn't freeze and crack the hose and/or pump.

spamersarevile wrote in message
...
I need some help on priming a water pump at the cottage. The pump
is located about 200 feet from the lake, maybe 6 feet higher in
elevation. Due to circumstances, it isn't possible to locate the
pump at the lake - I've looked into this - I know pumps are more
efficient at pushing water instead of pulling water - in this case,
it's just c'est la vie. My father used to prime the pump by pulling
the inlet end of the hose out of the lake, putting a ladder up against
a tree and tieing the hose to the tree, maybe 10 feet up and then
using a watering can to fill up the hose, and when it was full,
throwing the inlet back in the lake.

That tree is history this year.

Is it possible to fill up the hose at the pump end? There's a (screw
valve?) there (a plug that screws in just before the water line enters
the pump). Pore in the water through that valve into the hose and
then reclose that valve.

Problem is while there's plenty of water at the lake, there ain't any
200 feet away and that means schlepping maybe 20 watering cans one
at a time to the pump and instead of filling up the hose relatively
quickly, I'd be doing it gradually, over say 1 hour. Won't some/all
of that water simply run back into the lake? I could maybe get a
cart and lugg more water at one time, but it'd still take 3 or 4 trips
and maybe 20 minutes.

Is there some way of sucking the air out of the water hose. If the
inlet is in the lake, wouldn't the water then rise in the hose as the
air is vacated?

Every spring it's been a lot of work to get the pump working. It's
not the pump itself, just the distance involved and the impossibility
of situating the pump at the lakes' edge.

Mike