Are you considering Building a dam on your property / creek

[Generator]

Anyone here considering building a dam on their property (creek) for potential to harness energy?

[DamonHD]

If you search the site (directly or eg in Google with a site:fieldlines.com qualifier) you'll find plenty.

Rgds

Damon

[Generator]

I tried it before posting. I'm looking for someone who wants to do it now. Not done in the past. Even if someone has done it and are considering to improve / expand it will be fine.

If you search the site (directly or eg in Google with a site:fieldlines.com qualifier) you'll find plenty.

Rgds

Damon

[Mary B]

My old boss damned the creek running along one side of his property to create a fishing pond. I built him a little waterwheel that drove a small generator that lights his fishing dock. Nothing fancy, simple pvc paddles on a wood frame, chain drive to a little DC motor I had in my junk box. Lights up a little LED light at night. No battery, no electronics beyond a zener/current regulating resistor... Still running 17 years later! Way it is situated bearings stay mostly dry so lifespan has been great, replaced them once.

[machinemaker]

I am wanting to develop the creek on our property for low head micro-hydro. The state wildlife and environmental agencies have no problem with me building an artificial beaver dam with pipes for level control. I plan a dam a few feet high made with posts driven into the stream bed and natural branches and mud for the dam. The overflow pipes will provide water to an intake.
My question is that I will need to divert water a few hundred feet to get a two meter drop. I am planning in burying 8" flexible plastic pipe, we have freezing winters and I want to be ice free, What slope should I consider in my pipe run? just for clarity I am building a turbine with a down draft tube, so the water pipe would be nearly level with slope just to help water flow.
Or am I planning the wrong approach?

[Mary B]

One of the hydro guys will be able to answer that better than me... a 2 meter drop doesn't generate much... friends was uphill from his house so he had a 5 meter drop.... I know there is a website with a calculator to tell you how much power etc... Friend drains his in fall and swings it up out of the water channel because the channel freezes over on top. Being a water wheel he needs open water. We didn't calculate anything, seat of the pants redneck engineering. His little pond is spring fed so he gets no flood runoff into it. He pulls his drinking water from that spring! It is pure, cold and tasty! I have done a couple beer brews for him using it and it turns out some really tasty beer.

[mab]

powerspout low-head calculator:

https://www.powerspout.com/pages/advanced-lh-series-calculator

as long as you have enough flow 2m will work

[machinemaker]

Sorry for taking so long to respond and thanks for the replies, I do not get online daily. I found some great information in the format of PHD thesis papers out of the UK that had several spread sheets to figure power calculations, and the turbine design based on flow and drop. I bought a transit level and I need to get a true calculation on the drop. We only have about 400 feet of creek on our property to get drop. Except during August and September we have quite a bit of flow to fill an 8-10 inch pipe, just not a lot of head. The idea of an artificial beaver dam is that at the upstream side of the property is the site of a past beaver dam so this bodes well environmentally. I can build a spill way into the dam to compensate for our spring run off that changes our small creek into a raging torrent. Rarely during the flooding do the natural beaver dams sustain much damage. This time of year it is not uncommon to have a month or two of temperatures in the twenties or thirties, thus my thought of a pipe buried a couple of feet underground even though it should have running water in it.
Thanks.