Another Water wheel project

[northern installer]

In the distant past,I sucessfully used'TQF' red auto transmission fluid for racing motorcycle gearboxes,its pretty thin stuff even at low temperature,but has a high 'shear' resistance to the film.

[martin]

I think it was the first Lambo Miuras that came issued with STP added to the gearbox lubricant as the only way to stop them turning rapidly into gearbox spaghetti!

[Flamethrower_]

I remember my mate preferring  'Slick 50' in his gearbox whether it actually helped is another matter! 

[Jesen]

Hi Clifftop

My Land Rovers got Dexron 11 in the gearbox which is power steering oil and it's red and pretty dammed fluid.

[Cliff top]

Dextron 11...  seems cheap enough for a litre to have a go. I'll call at the car shop and see if they have any.


As for your batteries...cool.
I have a number of big SLAs given but opted to use a grid tie in the end.Seems to work ok, but I'm not sure it actually is doing any backwards movement at low powers, the disc seems not to move.

[Jesen]

As for your batteries...cool.
I have a number of big SLAs given but opted to use a grid tie in the end.Seems to work ok, but I'm not sure it actually is doing any backwards movement at low powers, the disc seems not to move.

I don't know How/what I'm going to do with them but read about a guy that hed been powering his house with some (wind turbine) for the last 27 years!These are only 3 years old, thought that they might come in for power cut's, we had one last week for 24hrs after high winds and have been told that become more and more frequent!

[Ivan]

Your electric meter has more than likely got a ratchet in it to stop it running backwards. Most meters in the UK have this. You need to have an export meter fitted if you want to see the benefit of exported electricity.

[Taffyboy]

Not unless you have a set of crimps and a lot of lead tags..

[Cliff top]

the old meter (in the separate garage) will run back tenths and units but not  tens

I just balance the load to keep within a ten unit range. Its a bit of a pain but works for the few units I am getting. since its on a standing charge free tariff- each unit declared when reading is 24p- so each unit earned is actually quite valuable

Perhaps someone could put me wise here...If I bought an import/export meter...(cheap enough from a site mentioned on here a while back and cheaper than the supply co?)
Would I get an electrician to fit it then call the supply co (Eon) to tell them?..
presumably they then check all is legit and alter meter numbers etc?
Or do they have to fit the meter?

And can one do this now with a waterwheel...I remember hearing here that they will only do it for PV/wind

[guydewdney]

I bought an export (only) meter. Local spark fitted it. Goodenergy pay me for whats on the meter. Simple.

[wexford]

Just spent an hour reading this thread.
very interesting.

A couple of things occured to me.

The chain and gearbox seem excessive. A 1/2 inch chain is fairly standatrd on a motorbike and are designed for over 100hp or approx 8000 watts.

Would a bicycle chain using duralier gears allow you to fine tune your gearing first before adjusting your invertor to load the wheel?

Have a read of "stronger than 100 men" "http://books.google.com/books?id=aZ0runvrq0AC&pg=PA330&dq=more+power+than+100+men+water+wheel#PPP1,M1"


http://permaculturewest.org.au/ipc6/ch08/shannon/index.html is very useful for calculating the sizes.


Stronger than 100 men shows the calculation during the 1700's and 1800's used to size and guess power from overshot wheels like yours.


It also details, in chapter 3 I think, the best speed to run an overshot wheel at which seemed to be as slow as possible while filling the buckets using all the flow e.g make bigger wider buckets so that no water is wasted by splashing or overfilling yet keeping the rpms very low. Then use gearing to bring the output up to usable speeds.


my two cents and soon to be putting my money where my mouth is in an undershot/breastshot wheel.

Wexford

[Cliff top]

Glad you enjoyed the ramblings caused from this project.
where the system is now is the result of trial & error - based on info picked up on this forum really. (I'll look at the book sometime perhaps)
The current chain is indeed overkill for what it currently is doing, however the parts were obtained for an earlier version and so thats why they are there now.  The key problem I had was to use the low speed very high torque (esp in flood rage!) from the main axle. I have already stripped the first gear in a less manly gearbox    and now this one has been in constant use since early november there are 'notches' in the smooth running of this one... in low water the wheel will now stop as there is a stiff spot/jam in the gearbox, so I had to remove the chain and let it free run gently for the past few weeks till the rain started again a couple of weeks ago.
I want to redesign the take off to improve the efficiency and do away with the gearbox... ideally with a very large gear (almost the dia of the wheel) so that it should give me ~10:1 step up straight away in a pretty frictionless way . I have also toyed with the idea of mounting a rubber belt round the diameter of the wheel to do much the same thing.

My basic limitation is that I only have 1.00- 1.2 m of head that I am playing with. The learning curve so far now shows me that its really only feasible to get usable quantities out of  perhaps a 2m wheel with bigger buckets... the buckets on mine at 5 inch deep aren't that far away from the axle to give enough power.  I now want to make a bigger wheel further downstream where I can get about 2m drop in total, though I will have to build a long sluice (~20m) to supply water to this.