the first winter with my aquair turbine surprised me. It took me by surprise plugging away under the ice. It acuatualy worked a little better the ice froze over the top of the dam forcing the water through the covert. I expected the covert to eventualy freeze being that it is just under the surface but i guess there must have been too much current. here is a youtube link to it from last fall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNF2anLxjI Anyways now that its working im bored again. So here come the questions again.
My property has two creeks the big one you see in the video and a small one that runs 90 degrees into it its much smaller mayber 6 inches deep and 2 feet across. basically the big creek in the video runs paralel to the road but about 400 feet from it and about 150 to 200 feet lower then the road. so the small creek runs underneith the road through a covert where it drops out of falls about 8 feet then runs the rest of the way down the hill to the main creek. on the way down the hill it passes my battery shed from the aquair turbine.
So heres my plan make a hoper under covert under the road. but id like to only use 1.25" back poly pipe because its cheep and easy to run down the hill with minimal visual impact. And because im in canada i was thinking that if i ran the pipe a couple of feet off the ground it may be able to run a little longer into the cold with the back pipe collecting a little heat. I know 1.25" is a little small but Im only hopping for around a 100watts. im thinking a little pelton setup near my battery shed so this would give me about 50 feet of head over 150 feet of lenght. To be honest not sure how to calculate flow in pipe but it would be as much as can be gravity feed through a 1.25 pipe.
any suggestions what to use for the generator its self. Ive been wanting to try winding one my self after reading about them on here for the last year or so.
any input you guys have would be apreciated
thanks karson
heres some links to a woodfired hot tub i built last summer someone might find usefull and my hydro ram(by the way most useful thing i ever built)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0iECQiLk5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGXLrmaadIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkcPnkZ_BxU
