tomorrow is step 1 in hydro heaven

 Yup -- my neighbor hired an escavator to his house so I've got him coming
over to dig me a pond.  The pond will be about 200 feet higher than my
house up the hill.  There are several springs above where the pond will
be so I should be able to feed it -- possibly even in the summer.

In the winter it will be no problemo -- the ground is shale and blue clay
so it should hold water without sealing it -- i hope.  Too much water is
usally the problem around here so once the rains start i'll have plenty.

I'm putting in 2 inch black plastic pipe down to my house with valves to
regulate the water.  I'll have to see just how fast I can run it so as
not to dry the pond out.

I've got a penton wheel that i'm hoping to hook to a PMA

http://www.hydrogenappliances.com/powerpmas.html

Dono if anyone has used these guys but they look like what I want.  Right
now I just have a delco alternator to use for testing.  Also my local
feed store actually had standard thread brass nozels that should work
great for spinning the turbine.  I'm shooting for 700+ RPM constant..
depends on the water flow naturally.

Then that'll go into a Xantrex c40 charge controller in diverter mode to
a set of batteries.  Since the hydro station will be next to my green
house I plan to divert into a heater that should keep the greenhouse warm
in the winter. (can you say tomatoes in jan?? )

The i'm planning on sending the outlfow over a wasabi bed and then back
into a streem below my house.

Man i've been looking forward to this bigtime.

 

z wrote:


How deep do you plan to make this pond ? And what area.

Graham

 How far south are you? If you are far enough north to require a greenhouse
to grow tomatoes in winter, you will have to add lights to your heat as they
need long days to grow and fruit.

I would worry about a pond 200 feet higher than my house in case the sides
of the pond start to soften and fail or if it overflows and starts cutting a
channel through the sides. You will need some means of controlling high
water levels.

Without any engineering credit to my name, I have problems with a 2" plastic
pipe as a sole drain for the pond, as mentioned above you don't want it to
overflow, and you may need more water for the wheel.

Personally, I think you should go bigger with possibly a 4" water main
plastic pipe and a valve that can throttle it back if need be, but allow it
to open fully if you need to lower the water level. Come to think of it,
probably a couple of pipes, one for the wheel and one for water control with
a normally closed valve.

 

that may be so.  Mostly I was thinking about just keeping the frost out


yea.. its near to a creek that flows pretty well, so the plan is to let
the run off go into that as needed.  The land around here is pretty
robust.. the blue clay is amazing.  I can cut a channel into that stuff
and it won't erode all that much I don't think.

We'll see .. if it looks like i need to do something more creative i'll
do that.  For now its just about getting the thing dug and then seeing
how it behaves.


It would be nice to have a larger pipe but I really can't afford anything
larger now.  I may move up to a larger pipe eventually but the stuff
isn't cheap!  I need about 500 feet of line and so i'm kind of stuck with
2 inch for now.  Actually thought about using surplus fire hose which
brings the price down quite a bit.

The head is pretty good, so i'm trying to build a high velocity, low
water solution.  That should let me run later into the summer when water
becomes an issue.

 

well it really depends on how the digging goes.  probably about 40 feet
long by maybe 30 feet wide by 8 or so feet deap.  Maybe 10 feet deap.  
Its a pretty big spot so however big the guy thinks he can make it.