Saturday November 24th was reasonably windy, so I had the idea of changing the blades to see if the new ones I'd cut made any difference. They are still PVC, but a little narrower and slightly shorter with the hope of getting a higher rpm.
The idea was to get the old ones off and the new ones on in about 1/2 hour, then I could see them both in the same wind conditions. This might sound a bit quick, but it's not a big mill and I have it so that it tilts down into the garden so that I can work on it easily.
I'd climbed up part of the pole and was making preparations to lower it, when I was shouted by a neighbour. This chap lives in the next street, his garden meets the bottom of mine, so I never see him usually. I was worried that he was about to complain, but it turns out that he was interested, and I asked him to come round and have a look while it was down. He ended up helping me lower it and had a quick tour of how it worked and went away with the URL of Otherpower.com.
I'm pleased he came round, because I've often wondered if I was causing anyone any problems, but now it seems that I have supporters of my project on all sides of my property.
The only downside was that I spent so much time chatting that I had to leave the job of getting the new blades on untill much later in the day and then the wind had died, and stayed that way for most of the week
It returned this last weekend, with renewed vigour. The new blades didn't seem to make a lot of difference, but I did once see 7amps in one of the gusts. What I wanted to happen was more consistant spin. It was the next day that I realised I'd left off the central boss.
I was able to shin up the pole to refit it when the wind had died that night. The next day I had a surprise; the mill is now generating for more of the time in less wind.
Does it seem feasible that the boss would have that much affect?
