The Cottage Smallholder

Hi Amy

Building a waterwheel is the easy bit ,getting it to work right is the hard bit ,

first you need to work out how much water you have and how much head you can make use of .

if you have a lot of water and no head you will be better with an undershot wheel ,

if you have a large head an overshot wheel is far more efficient and in my opinion nicer to watch .

it will take quite a bit of power to generate 240v AC of any use and you cant store it as is ,

so if you only have a limited amount of water or head better to generate 12/24/36v DC store it in batteries and invert it to 240v AC as you need to use it ,

hope this helps MOS xx

3ravens said:

MOS said:

3ravens said:

Overshots are prettier, MOS, until the wooden race rots out....... oops.......

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 then they become undershots and thats when you fnd out if your alternator will run backwards

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Well, this particular one was in a historical building and was connected to a set of stones for grinding grains into flour, so no alternators were harmed.....

but did it turn the flour back into grain

JoannaS said:

Hope that isn't from experience!

Is there any other way of using the flow of water for generating electricity do you know of MOS?

 

Hi joanna

there are lots of ways of using water to make electricity

it just dependa on how much water you have and mainly how far you can make it fall

or if its in a lake how high the waves get ,this is really wind energy but its stored in the water

the main types are

water wheel overshot

water wheel undershot

turbine

pelham wheel

or wave rider

they all have their good points and bad points ,but the crunch decision relyies on the overiding point of ,how much water and how fast is it traveling MOS xx