Demon water motor

For a widget that's clearly planning to transform itself into a solid hunk of rust, it's in remarkably good shape. Is it free to turn? Looks like a fine opportunity for a bit of electrolytic derusting.

The rust is only superficial it all goes roundy roundy perfectly well, I even ran it up on the garden hose when I fist got it - made a pleasent whirring noise.

NHH

As it's a Pelton wheel, the water gets out wherever it feels like. It's an impulse turbine, so it needs nozzles and buckets, but once the water let has bounced off the buckets, there's no need to channel the flow in any way. Peltons are a complicated wheel, but their housings are little more than a bracket to hold the nozzle in relation to the wheel axis and then a boxy casing to catch the spray. The outlet is rarely more than an open bottom to the box.

I 'know' there is an open area at the bottom of the casing, but looking at the photos I can't see it either! Have to go and look at the item itself now.

NHH

Most interesting - I had no idea there were any such plants operating in UK. Google induction generator for more on the electrical principles. Smaller motors can also be made self-exiting by loading with capacitors - there's a good little book on the subject ('motors as generators for micro hydro' or some such) from Camden.

NHH

Even better, a copy of Rankin Kennedy's "Electrical Installations" from just after 1900

There were quite a few of these things in the Lakes. Backbarrow ironworks had (has?) one too.

I remember reading somewhere that water boards didn't like them & used to lobby local authorities to pass Bye-laws to stop their use.

Well it is effectively nicking power - big pumping stations like Kew Bridge didn't run for free! Of course the modern move to water metering stops any thoughts of doing something similar now.

NHH

Andy Dingley wrote (snip):

Nice books, and what angineering polymath Rankin Kennedy must have been with the number of titles on various subjects to his name. A quick lunchtime flick provided a description of the 'squirrel cage' motor but nothing on induction generators - perhaps the negative region of the torque-slip curve was yet to be explored!

NHH

W-e-l-l, if there was enough head pressure to fill a tank in the roof, you could use the gravity pressure to turn the turbine when you ran the tap - after all, you've got it just sitting there!

Ah, use the energy locked up in the water you are already using. OK, so you've just nipped in from the workshop for a pee and he cistern on the downstairs loo is refilling from the tank in the roof; say 2 gallons of water over a fall of 25 feet? Now repeat that every five minutes and, assuming you can extract it efficiently, you have the equivalent of about 1/300th of a horsepower at your disposal - oh and I'd go and see a doctor about the state of your prostate!

NHH

Never was any good at sums ;o))

My prostate is in good - if irradiated - order. God bless the NHS I say without whom I'd have died from prostate cancer about two years ago.

Are you over fifty? Don't risk it, get a PSA blood test. It killed poor old Fred Dibnah.

Climbs down off soapbox ;o))

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

No water meter, mains pressure water system, and prostate just fine thanks (tested last week).

The one's I'm talking about were small hydro plants, using rivers. Plenty of these in the Lakes where they're small enough to not get the generating boards interested, but the available fall within a small site is enough to make a turbine head practicable.

You still need to do paperwork for a licence to extract power from the river, but they weren't AFAIK against this from sheer principle, as they would be for using mains pressure.

Do you know any biography for him? As I've uploaded a lot of scanned images from his books to Wikimedia Commons, I fancied doing a brief bio article on him. Many of the electrical devices are not only described by him, but he claims to have invented them - especially for various sorts of homopolar generator.

Also engines (is the gas turbine in 'modern engines' claimed by him?) and aircraft:-

NHH

kimsiddorn wrote (snip):

Not (quite) yet!

NHH