Isnt it crazy how a person can get caught up in life? Here I am, back to my old, REALLY OLD thread, and a few things have changed but I still am not making power. Well, much power, anyway. It is nuts to look at the difference of my build locations, time and flooding has changed them, I have had a lot more time to dream, and now am down to a choice of whether I want to use a vortex or overshot wheel.
At the time of the original post and pictures, it was very dry, the representative pics were of basically a worst case flow scenario. ______ was correct, it would be better to design for higher flow, rather than lower flow.
So, here is where we are to date.
I have 2 levels of water, basically a spring pond with about 3' of head that flows into another pond, and then everything flows out those two 18" culverts. I scrapped the idea of using the ends of those culverts to create power, as they are too far from the house to be of much use and I would rather have the power on my side of the creek.
I trenched right down the middle of my spillway, m/l, laid and bolted the pipe together, and then backfilled the trench with concrete. On the intake end I will add the gate valve, this "intake" will be filtered by 2'x4" grid stock panel attached to a dock, which is a recycled/ upcycled 20' ladder rack for a truck that I found as scrap. This should keep out beavers and trash. This is a concern of mine, as the pipe only has 2" of fall in 120 feet, and therefore it is unlikely to have (often) enough velocity to clean itself out, though I imagine at flood stage it definitely will. Speaking of floods, in april 2017, the lake dam overtopped and "one" body of water covered both levels of water. Nothing was damaged, though, thankfully.
Anyway. Got the pipe in, dug a hole for an 8' rotation tank, THEN I decided to STOP where I am at, to test the hydro vortex generator concept off the flow of the upper pond, and THAT made me rethink the plan. I disassembled the old bicycle powered Gen and adapted it to the vortex tank. I did get a little power off of it, enough to run 2 strings of LED christmas lights, but it really slowed the machine down, "what a drag". I built the tank from a rusted out 300 gal diesel tank cut m/l in half. due to rains, and wet weather, ebb and flow of the water table, I was constantly adjusting for flow. I ended up cutting a 4 1/4" hole in the bottom, (too big for lower flows) and I came up with various things to drop into the hole to reduce it, a 3" toilet flange is one that works well. My takeaway is that it is something that due to variable flow it will be more trouble than it is worth, I will have to constantly fiddle with it to get optimal performance. Also, given that the big tank (it WAS going to be 8' dia) needs a lot of water to run it, it might become totally useless in times of low flow, as seen in the original pics. My thought is, a wheel would be better/ more efficient over the long haul of seasonal changes. Essentuially Im back to update on progress and troll for opinions as to whether I am on the right track.
Take a look at these new pics. Where the pit for the tank is, from the top of the 12" pipe to the bottom I could get 6' head, max....however, if I add 75 more feet of pipe, I can get 9 feet of head, by hanging the wheel over into a small spring pond there. Thanks in advance for any input, I do appreciate it!
intake point, you can see the 2 18" culverts in the distance. These will get flaps to close them off, with attached floats that will open them in flood stage.