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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Nuclear energy in an oil-poor world
  • Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 10:53:46 EDT

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




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