Nando,
Bad picture taking conditions- overcast and drizzly, but I'll include a photo anyway. I've also made a site map to assist you in directing the photo taking. We got a bit of rain and the water is all muddy. The spot that was 16 in. deep last week is now 30 in. deep., and the water's velocity increased to 6.7 fps.
Brief overview: The creek runs through a valley 25 ft. deep and about 500 ft. wide (Our house is on the high ground, so I'm not too worried about flooding myself out!). The creek bed is very rocky- golf ball sized to basketball sized mostly. Occasionally ones up to 2 ft. across. The banks are vertical and generally around 3-4 ft. higher than the water. Directly behind the house there is a hairpin turn that slows the water greatly and causes ice dams to build up during the spring thaw.
Here (hopefully) is a rough map:
![](http://www.otherpower.com/images/scimages/6098/SITE_MAP.jpg)
Here is a (probably useless) photo:
resize your pic to under 100KB and make sure it has .jpg on the end of the file name.
Thanks for your calculations (And to you, Ungrounded Lightning Rod!). A run of pipe that long, and that diameter, is probably beyond the scope of what I'm willing to take on. Can you think of any other methods to get the 1500 watts I'm hoping for? What I had in mind originally was to make a "funnel" out of timbers and rocks to create a bottleneck where the water would run deeper (about 4 ft.) and faster. I thought this might be feasible because of the steep banks constraining the water. Here is roughly what I had in mind:
![](http://www.otherpower.com/images/scimages/6098/TIMBER_FUNNEL.jpg)
If possible, I would prefer to use something like a "Banki" or "Savonius" because it's easier for me to gain power via a wider turbine, rather than deeper(like a large diameter propeller.) Also, do you think a semi lift-based design like the Ed Lenz wind turbine would be suitable for hydro?
Thanks again for your interest Nando (And everyone else!).
Editors Note;
Opening new stories to continue ongoing discussion of an older story makes it very difficult to track the whole process, especially when it is basically directed to one person.
Please keep this in mind. And for now I will leave this with comments disabled to encourage continuing this in the original.