to repair it or not to repair it

[knob2001]

Hi!

I'm a newby here, so i don't know much about tech...

We (my girlfriend and i)just recently brought a home in spain with a solar equipment installed. Although we have a pretty good electric supply (the solar system gives us more or less what we need to watch the tv and use the refrigerator)we found in the basement an Air-X wind turbine. It seems to be kind of damage somewhere inside.

We have a bunch of 12 batteries OPzS and there're some wires coming down from the ceiling up to the batteries in what it seems to be the installation for the wind turbine. A friend told us the AIR-X could give us as much power as the solar panels, or at least increase our power a little bit. What you think about fixing the damaged wind turbine? In this site i found a lot of useful info to build a new one... and the same friend told us there's a way to design a turbine from the motor of a washer machine. By the way, our house is built in the seashore, 10 metres over the sea, at the top of a cliff, so the wind is always blowing day/night!

Thanx in advance.

knob2001.

[drdongle]

I believe I would look into repairing it or having it repaired ( but thats me).

Carpe Vigor

Dr.D

[wdyasq]

There may be nothing wrong with your machine.  Many small air turbines are very noisy.  A roof mounted turbine will transmit vibration into the roof.  The combination may be enough to make a good night's sleep near impossible.

Ron

[RobD]

I'm not sure what you mean by "somewhat damaged inside". There are bearings and electronics inside the 403. Also the 'X' is a relatively new mill and it may be under warranty. I'd send an email out to Southwest describing the machine and ask them if it's worth fixing and what their basic costs are.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

The X is also quiet, feathers by braking, and (at least some of 'em) designed for service in a saltwater/marine environment.

Some commercial mills have trouble with corrosion if run near a sea.  (There's this mill in the San Francisco Bay area, for instance, that is a showcase for stupid envrionmental-wacko feelgood projects, that rusted solid within a few months of instalation just as was predicted.)  The X should not have this sort of trouble.

(Or at least that's what's alleged.  I haven't actually played with one of 'em, though I did see a couple on sailboats as auxiliary power supplies at one point.)