Balloon Pump on a Diet

About 4 years ago when I first starting playing with the idea of making my own Down Air Mattress or Balloon Bed I looked for a light weight way to inflate Poly Tubes or Balloons. I found this Balloon Pump made by Gayla Ind. Inc.

http://www.gaylainc.com/twistez1/twistez7.html

The Balloon Pump weighs 78.8 grams or 2.78 ounces. I took it apart and modified some and reduced the weigh down to 1.72 ounces. The photo's show how I did this.

I have used this modified Pump to inflate my Stephenson's DAM. With the Stephenson's DAM their is little or no resistance to the air flow so the small pump works well.

1.



2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.

Bill,
Is the yellow body just 1/2 the length of the intact green unit, or do the yellow Parts A & B in picture #4 somehow "mate up" to result is a green sized pump?

Sorry I'm not getting it.

Hi Greg,

I took apart a standard length Balloon Pump (Yellow One).

Then cut the main body part in half.

I changed the Pump rod to a lighter and shorter piece of Arrow Shaft.

Put it back together.

The Green Pump is pictured to show what the Pump looked like "before" modification.

Bill,
Thanks for the step-by-step.

I got it now. Definitely a pump on a diet.

And thanks for the photos essay. I'll know what to expect when mine arrives.

I wonder if it would work for packrafting also? Also handy for late night balloon antics. Multiuse. Cool. Seriously though, GREAT WORK!

Hi,

When I tested the modified Balloon Pump it took about 3 times longer to blow up the same size Balloon as it did with the "stock" Pump. You have to realize that blowing up a Balloon has a lot of resistance to the air flow going in.

It worked Ok on my Down Air Mattress since their is no resistance to the air flow going in. The Down Air Mattress also was only blown up about 2/3 of the way full for comfort.

My Stephenson pump sack weighs 2.6 oz. Your pump fill the D.A.M. up pretty quickly? Course the sack doubles as a (heavy) sack for the sleeping bag

No more ridiculous "catching" 10 or so bags full of air and squeezing them into the D.A.M.

You know Stephenson ought to be experimenting with re-doing the bottomd of their bags with cuben. For one thing the D.A.M. could be built into the bottom instead of being completely separate and going into a sleeve.

I've always though the downfall ( or weak link or whatever) of the Stephenson system is the weight of the bottom section of the bag. I mean you can get a really nice bag with great loft and use the D.A.M. alone and cut the equivalent weight in about half ( and this is with basically sleeping on and compressing half the insulation in the bag.

A Marmot lithium weighs 44 oz. the 74" D.A.M. is listed as 23 oz for a total of 67oz. The roughly equivalent Stephenson top (30oz)/bottom (30oz) and D.A.M. weighs in at 83 or a full pound heavier. I'll bet a unitary bottom made of cuben with the hood and sides would bring the total weight down to less than 60 oz. Then you'd really have something hard to beat for comfort size warmt and weight.

sighhhhhhh