Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 6/2/2005 10:10:46 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
genegerue AT ruralize.com writes:


> >One of my wildest criteria is to find a place with water power.  It is 
> >easy to generate huge amounts of power with water.
> 
> I have a similar fantasy. Once the ram pump is putting water in a high tank 
> 24/7 there will be surplus water up there. I know there are generators that 
> operate with low flow if the head is high. So I could generate chunks of 
> juice when needed.
> 
> I don't know if the stream could do the job.

Guys, in you coldest, soberest, detatched day do the math.  I have three 
creeks on the placel.  One is 20' wide, one about 15' wide, and one 3' wide.  
The 
two larger ones vary in flow rate due to season and weather butt he smallest 
is steady.  In the smallest I achieved a 28" drop through a 2" pipe which 
translated into hundreds of gallons a minute.  All the creeks have a gradual 
but 
substantial drop over the 780 ft they flow through the property.  None are 
near 
the house.   

The smallest creek where I slightly impounded the water and installed the 2" 
pipe is where the homemade ram pump is going to provide irrigation for the 
garden.  It only needs to lift the water about 15' into a 600 gal tank and 
I'm 
well within the parameters for that task.  But electricity?  I've done the 
math 
for Pelton type generators and overshoot type wheels and by the time I 
generated the DC, got the electricity over lines to batteries (there would be 
a loss 
if I used DC lines, and also a loss if I converted the DC to AC at the point 
of generation in order to not be transfering DC over a long distance) -- the 
amount of electricity I could practically generate and store is modest.   I 
could generate enough to start the planner or table saw so long as I wasn't 
doing 
it very five minutes (get all the work together and leave the tool running 
until done).   But owing to the expense of batteries, converters, lines, 
generating equipment ... a few dollars a month of grid electricity starts to 
look 
pretty good.

The old koan of RE still comes about - except in the case of necessity such 
as off the grid property - if we reduced our energy consumption enough to use 
only RE, then the expense of the same amount of grid energy would not be a 
major expense.

What's called for is serious out of the box, off the grid thinking.  For 
example, I have long wanted a bandsaw mill.  Sawlogs are plentiful here 
abouts but 
finished lumber isn't.  The greenhouse would serve as a drying kiln in the 
summer and I have a planner and edger.  The cheapest light duty bandsaw mill 
(the Oscar) I've found is nearly $3000 and it ain't gonna happen.  So it 
seemed 
that the only alternatives were buy sawmill lumber, do without, or saw it by 
hand (which I've done, but I don't recommend it).  Then I was reading about 
how 
the Norse made those marvelous overlap constructed ships.  How did they get 
the planks?   The answer was that they rived them.  Split them with froes 
from 
the log.  Now there's a possibility for my rather modest needs!  So I am 
going 
to take some wedges and froes and some of the very straight grained sections 
of wood and give it a try.  For building sheeting it could be used as is and 
otherwise it could be planned.   Might be a wrong tack, but might not.

There's no free lunch, but then again maybe we don't have to eat so much,

James