Well my first wind turbine that I have been playing with since November finally went up today.
We have had many days with nice breezes recently but today was clam which was good for mounting the turbine. In my other hobby, amateur astronomy, there is an unwritten law that when someone sends a lot of money on a new telescope that guarantees several weeks of cloudy nights. I wonder if raising a new turbine guarantees several weeks of no wind:>)
The nice thing about this setup is the mast is only about six feet higher than the roof of my house. I could assemble the mast and then climb up on the roof and mount the turbine. Due to space limitations of my property and the proximity of my neighbor's houses there was no room for a tilt-up type tower. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could do this. The setup shown here was the best I could think of. The only concern is vibration but the mast is not mounted "on" the roof. Rather it extends down to the ground so I hope vibration won't be too bad. In any event we don't get that much wind here.
The second concern are the trees. I'd have to have a 60' tower to get above my Douglass Fur trees. Usually the wind comes from the street side of my house so I hope the trees won't hurt too much. Actually I'm thinking of repainting the machine dark green. Then the machine would be almost impossible to see. It would make the machine less conspicuous.
My daughter tells me there are a lot of "radical" environmentalists at her high school. I told her to ask if any of them have solar panels and a wind turbine above their house, ha, ha, ha.
For complete construction photos look here... http://www.atm-international.com/RenewableEnergy/Wind/axial_flux_alternator_project1.htm
Rob