Small stream 6' overshot water wheel???

[quest01]

I have a stream that I can get say 6' of head on a overshot water wheel and the stream is only about 30gal per minute. It verys but that is the average. Is this enough to turn a pma? How much power would one expect to get? Looking to charge my 12 volt batteries? I want to make a pma like that with the volvo axle and use gears or pulleys to get the rpm's up.

Thanks for any input.

   Barry

[Flux]

Theoretically you have about 40w.

With wheel efficiency, alternator efficiency and gearing you may get about 10, which is quite useful 24 hrs a day.

With a Banki ( Mitchell ) turbine and direct coupling you may get this up to 20w.

Flux

[Gary D]

Hi quest01, if you have measured the flow rate accurately, here are some numbers. A horsepower is equal to raising or lowering about 33,000 lbs. a ft. per minute. 30 gallons weighs about 250 lbs. X 6 ft.drop or 1500 lbs. per minute. Divide that by 33000 lbs and you're rough potential is 4.5 percent of a horsepower. 33.9 watts potential ( although it's  24/7 unlike solar panels)Then you must figure in losses... If you haven't measured with a bucket, or some other means, you could be way off. It doesn't take much time to do... Good luck, hope something made sence... If my numbers are incorrect hopefully someone will catch it!

 As for a pma being able to convert the power, it can be done. Otherpower (top of page ) has lots of experiments... can even capture the power of a hamster (Skippy weighs a lot less) ...Gary D.

[Norm]

    The Number Crunchers will be along in a little bit but just imagine throwing 1 gal jugs of water over a 6foot fence ...1 ever 2 seconds.

   My high-teck lab assistants tell me that a gallon of milk weighs 8 or 9 lbs.

   ("Can I put the milk back now Grandpa?")

  so roughly that would be about 250 lbs. x 6ft or about 1500ft.pounds so whatever ft.lbs. per HP.

     My calculations may be flawed. but that was fun!               ( :>) Norm.

[Norm]

   Well the number crunchers must have come along while we were weighing the milk! LOL!

      Anyhow like they say amounts to useable power 24/7 more dependable than windpower.

  In fact to take it a step further if you lived on property that had a hill you could have the power of the flowing water to pump back up into a pond for storage then release the water onto a larger waterwheel over a shorter period of time...of course there would be losses handling it twice but when the energy is free....and all this time it hasn't been used....

                    Have Fun!

Wish I had something like that! Your'e so lucky!

                  ( :>) Norm.

[quest01]

I'm on a hill and most of the water is from springs and run off. I want to hook this up with a wind turbine for my battery charging. Now I'm using natural gas from my well to run a genrator and a car alternator for charging. Totally off the grid, they want $3000 to hook me up to the grid and I refuse. Am living in cabin now and will be starting to build my house in the spring. This site has been so helpful, GREAT PLACE AND INFORMATION THANKS!!

Barry

[quest01]

Any ideas for the size of alternator (volvo style with 24 magnets 1x2x1/2 and 12 coils 35x 2 #14wires)? And how about a width for the wheel 2'? I have seen the wheel with the 5 gal buckets. Am thinking about a wooden wheel with some sort of plastic or bucket setup. It gets quite cold and snowy here.

Barry

[jimjjnn]

Natural gas from your well. Water also from same well?

[SomeGuy]

Actually, if the 6' head is measured from where the water comes out of the sluice to the surface level of the water in the stream then you won't be extracting the potential energy of the full 6' of head. Why? Because the buckets don't fill completely with the water at the absolute top of the wheel and they start emptying before the bottom of the wheel. Assume 33 watts is the energy in the falling water. The wheel is going to run slow requiring gearing up. It is going to ice up in winter. Then you have to transmit that power to your batteries. I personally think you would be lucky to get more than 3 watts of useful power out of the system 200' away.

[ghurd]

Just in case you missed them,

This is as simple as it gets. 2 amps, 24/7.

http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_experiments_waterwheel.html

This is a 3 phase

http://www.otherpower.com/scotthydro1.html

G-

[quest01]

I have seen the other experiments, but I have at least 6' of fall so why would I make a 2' wheel? I would like to get more watts to make this thing charge more. How about when its been raining and the stream is at twice the flow for a couple days then I would be making 60 watts instead of 30.