Anyone using water lift to measure/regulate vacuum?

I used some aquarium airline tubing to make a gauge by taping one end about 3” into an aquarium and the other end about 5 foot above the water level. It was enough height to get one of my valves set so that it lets out just enough air to get 3” of mercury or 40.375” of water. Can take a few minutes to reach the maximum vacuum level but its within an inch or 2 of the settling point quickly!

Clever.

How do you regulate the vacuum, by adjusting the height?

Air line 1 is attached to a whisper 30 aquarium air pump modifed to work as a vacuum (see sticky in “pumpers forum” for $15 vac pump)
Air line 2 is attached to a brass hand pump so I can measure the vacuum, for a short time I used a water lift and measured the distance
Air line 3 is attached to a penis cylinder…
Air line 4 is attached to a valve and to nothing on the other end, the extra tubing silences the sucking sound coming from the valve

Vacuum is adjusted by controlling how much air leaks in through line 4 and works really well and is easy to adjust as long as there is a way to measure the vacuum level. The water lift I described in the first post would not be good for regulating vacuum but for measuring vacuum level its superb.

A tube made of a larger diameter could work as a regulator. limit how much water can be lifted in the tube before it starts letting air in and voila a simple regulator.

That is awesome! Something like that would keep the vacuum steady without having to constantly adjust vacuum levels. Kind of a “set it and forget it”.

Well thought out.

Are you using it for your PE now?
If so what kind of vacuum level are you using?
How long have you been using it?

Thank you for sharing this idea.

I dont use a water lift as a regulator I use the aquarium air valve you see in the pic. The pump itself is very consistent so I can pretty much set it and forget it with the way its setup now in fact I do that often. For years I have on/off PE’d and not seen much in gains at least not in a permanent way (I’ve gained maybe a bit more than 1/4” girth and zilch for length.)

A relatively recent move and nothing but time on my hands has me doing PE alot more everyday than I ever have in the past and its been just about 100% PE from pumping. I’ve been using vaseline (the stinky stuff with aloe and vitamin e) as a lube as I believe it keeps the skin in better condition especially when pumping *alot*. I pump for 1-1/2 to 2 hours at a time at about 2.5 inches of mercury then take a break of anywhere from a couple hours to whatever time I feel like doing it again. I’m trying to keep a certain level of pump. I really think this is going to work great and I *REALLY* hope I dont hurt myself!

Nothing feels bad from doing this there is no numbness, good color, strong erections so I have good PI’s (physiological indicators) so i’m going with it until my body tells me otherwise! One thing to point out tho is that most of the time I am not 100% erect in the tube the 2.5” vacuum level just isn’t enough but I’m always at 80%+. Its like a constant and gentle pull. Oh.. the timing of 1-1/2 to 2 hours has more to do with when I feel the donut effect starting than anything else. I’m trying to keep the donut from creating too much skin right away and its usually when the donut starts to form that the tip of my glans starts to feel numb. I may do foreskin regen after I get bigger tho as I’ve read the “donut effect” is great at growing skin. I know my glans is getting much more sensitive just from all the vaseline and its only been 3 days of what for me is extreme pumping.

Smertrios - thanks for the post!

Over the years there have been a few posts here about measuring vacuum. The issue came up when someone raised questions about the accuracy of the gauge on the brake bleeder pump that most guys are using. Those gauges are usually 0-30 inches of mercury. Since the general advice here has been to stay under 5” of mercury to avoid injury, the focus is therefore on the lowest end of the scale.

The dial type gauge is not necessarily accurate across the entire range and I was especially suspicious of the 0-5” range. I tested 3 dial gauges on an electric vacuum pump (constant vacuum). All 3 gauges showed different readings - confirming my suspicion that a cheap dial vacuum gauge is not accurate in the lower range. Add to this problem the difficulty in reading the scale - counting those little tick marks.

I searched for more accurate vacuum gauges - they are certainly available but very expensive, sometimes over $500 - far exceeding my budget.

Your idea is spot on and should be developed further. You are basically making a manometer using water instead of mercury. I will experiment with a few ideas and post my results.

For the guys that think all this analysis is over-kill, maybe. My experience is that just slightly higher vacuum pressure will cause injury (too much edema) so it is important (to me at least) to get the vacuum right each and every time.

Here are some conversions for inches of mercury (Hg) to inches of water:

Inches Hg => Inches Water

1 => 13.6

2 => 27.2

3 => 40.8

4 => 54.4

5 => 68

and so on…

Atmospheric pressure and temperature play a role in these calculations but for our purposes I think we can ignore these effects.

Well,”I” think you’re really on to something. I am looking at increasing glans size and this might be the perfect compliment to the manual exercises I am trying to develop for that purpose. This “gentle pull” you’ve developed is perfect for longer sessions and would keep blood in the glans the whole time while allowing circulation.

I hope you don’t hurt yourself either but with your cautious approach I think you’ll be just fine the way you’re going.

This is a great opportunity to see the effectiveness of your vacuum regulator as 100% of your PE is from this and the results will not be muddled by other exercises.

Thanks for sharing a great post. Please keep us up on any gains.

Doing things correctly and to the best of your abilities is never “over-kill”, it is progress. Developing better equipment will only benefit us all.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

I took about 20 feet of pvc vinyl tubing and using tape made a giant manometer on the wall - in the shape of a “U” - each vertical side was about 8 feet high with the bottom of the “U” touching the floor. Then filled the tubing with water to about midway up, so about 4 feet high. It took a while for the air bubbles to work their way out of the tubing. I then attached my brake bleeder pump to 1 side of the “U” and pumped to 5” Hg. Then simply measured the difference in water height. In this first trial the water went from 47” up to 84.5” - so about 37.5 inches. That number needs to be doubled since the other side dropped 37.5 inches. Therefore total water column of 75”. Keep in mind that 5” Hg is equal to 68” of water (since mercury is so much heavier than water). So my gauge is 7” of water or about 0.5” Hg (10%) wrong to the high side. I repeated the test several times with the same results.

The lesson learned here is that these gauges are OK but not accurate at least at the low end of the scale. The manometer has a much higher resolution therefore much more accurate. However, in daily or even weekly use the dial gauge is much more convenient. Knowing that my gauge is consistently 10% high is enough for me to compensate - if I want 3.5” Hg I simply use the gauge to about 3” Hg.

I will try to repeat the experiment at 3” Hg on the gauge to see if the error is consistent - I suspect it will be.

The other thing to keep in mind is that these cheap gauges can lose their calibration very easily (drop it on the floor) - so the manometer is a great way to periodically check the calibration.

Consistency is actually more valuable to us than accuracy. While we know that vacuum of 3”-5” Hg is most effective, we don’t know (at least I don’t) that EXACTLY 3” Hg is much better than EXACTLY 3.5” Hg. The original poster (Smertrios) was very correct in mentioning PI’s (physiological indicators) as the key guide to determining what level of vacuum works best.

Hope this helps!

Surely it doesn’t matter if your gauge is inaccurate as long as it’s consistent ?
I’ve learned through experience that 2.5”hg on my gauge is right for me as in no negative effects like edema or red spots. Whether that really is 2.5”hg isn’t important !
At least until I buy a new pump I guess.

OK - here are my results for 3” Hg and 4” Hg and 5” Hg:

Keep in mind this is testing just 1 of my gauges - the one attached to my brass brake bleeder (commonly used here):

3” Hg on the gauge, 50” water, 23% higher than 40.8” water
4” Hg on the gauge, 64” water, 18% higher than 54.4” water
5” Hg on the gauge, 75” water, 10% higher than 68” water

It appears that the gauge is even less accurate at lower vacuums (lower on the scale).

The good news is I repeated the tests multiple times with the same results. The bad news is the gauge is even less accurate than I thought, particularly at 3” Hg. However, in actual usage the problem may not be significant.

Another way of looking at the results:

3” Hg on the gauge, 50” water, 3.7” Hg actual
4” Hg on the gauge, 64” water, 4.7” Hg actual
5” Hg on the gauge, 75” water, 5.5” Hg actual

So in the operating range of 3”-5” Hg the gauge is high by 0.7 to 0.5 respectively. In reading my gauge I cannot distinguish between 0.5 and 0.7 anyway so it is about the same to me…

I think I am going to go look for a better gauge and…. take all that tape and tubing off my wall.

Cheers!

FYI - My Tetra Whisper 30-60 converted to suction on 1 side only is pulling 5.3” Hg. Easily regulated back to 3” Hg with a “controlled leak” using a 1/4” drip irrigation valve.

Here are a couple of diagrams of simple u-tube manometers:

Thank you for sharing this kinda stuff mo.

I would never come up with the stuff you and Smertrios are doing on my own.