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Smart Drive Oil Barrel Undershot Waterwheel
bmannz:
Sunday morning and its time to install the other two hoops, one problem - how do I get them spaced correctly off the hub while forcing them down into the slots on the rims of the barrels?
Two hot chocolates later and the solution presents itself in the form of 4 ratchet tiedowns, run off the axle out to the outer hoop, running around with a tape measure a crank here and a crank there and its looking pretty good
Rinse and repeat for the inner hub and its starting to look like a waterwheel, Phil grinds off the excess axle and we are ready to drop this thing in the creek.
Using the 5 tonne Cat to wrangle the wheel into place over the creek we sling the wheel on a bridle made from some more 50mm galv scaf pipe,
The wheel is looking VERY heavy
The flow is looking very low
The online calculators tell me its not going to work
A lot of people are standing around to see the result of two days of furious activity
Its time to find out if this has been a complete waste of time and I have created an expensive sculpture.....
It turns!
It doesn't turn a lot, but water backs up and the thing rotates despite sitting out of level on a rough bit of pipe with no bearings and no flume.
This result is enough to tell me it might work in the easy location next to the culvert rather than the harder location down the paddock a wee way.
Next job to assemble the flume, we knock it together out of 6 pieces of 200x50 and drop it in the creek
With a bit of temporary ply jammed in at the inlet to divert the creek onto the flume we get the massive flow of 15mm depth over the 700mm width, not a lot, but it was this flow that made it turn and I know we will get a lot more after rain so things are looking up.
Back onto the Cat excavator and we drop the wheel on its transport axle down onto the flume and after a bit of wiggling and jiggling the wheel is in place and even with only 15mm of depth, the wheel starts to turn!
bmannz:
The next step is to figure out how to mount the thing.
Obvious move is a couple of 300mm posts driven down both sides and sit the pillow blocks on them, however two issues have presented themselves.
It was obvious from the test fit that a lot of adjustment in the many degrees of freedom would be a big benefit and secondly the axle height is below the peak flow height
After a lengthy design and planning meeting (sitting by the fire with beer) we come up with a float arrangement to lift the wheel up in high flows, given the weight of this thing - approx 100kgs, I reckon I will need about 6 metres of truss to allow the floats (empty plastic barrels) enough leverage to lift the weight clear. Something like this: (Float is under water to the left of the wheel, bridge is to the right)
After seeing how tight the alignment in the flume will be, the play over 6m will be too large so back into the design meeting for a rework. I have some actuator skills and so perhaps we can make a pivot and ballast arrangement with a float sensor to lift the wheel clear of the high flows something like this:
Now float sensors and linear actuators are my bag baby so I can definitely make this work but my KISS alarm is going off, and so we come to the point of this dreadfully long post:
What would Jesus do here?
Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think my next move should be - over to you :)
george65:
Thanks for posting!
I would love to play with MH myself. Not likley to happen but there is a lot of satisfaction in reading what you are doing. I'm with you, all these calculators are all well and good but to me, if there is water moving, there is energy. Sure it may not be a lot but if there was no challenge there would be no satisfaction.
Whatever the next move is, please be sure to post it up too. This was a real good read.
Bruce S:
Don't forget the beers! 8)
tanner0441:
Hi.
It has to be do able. 50 W/year is less than 10 W/month. May not do a lot in the summer and lul your friend into holding his wallet open but the winter the tables could turn.
I would also have looked at Archimedes screw in a pipe. more than one turn, I would look at three, could be classed as positive displacement and every drop of water could be ducted down the pipe and encourage the shaft to turn.
I saw one used to lift water and when the motor was turned of and the chain to the gear box removed the thing immediately started to turn the other way, and it was only about 20 degree slope.
I hope your successful, innovators deserve reward...
Brian
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