Home-made Hydroelectric Power, 1990

The Wheel
My water wheel is made of wood, steel bolts and paint. The sides were constructed from three-quarter inch plywood, and the eight buckets are made from one-quarter inch plywood. The framework of spokes is made of home sawn pine 2x4's. All pieces are held together with glue, wood screws and quarter-inch carriage bolts. The edges of the buckets have been fibre-glassed for additional strength and the whole thing was coated with two layers of marine enamel paint.
The outside diameter of the wheel is six feet and the width is two feet. Spokes are bolted to a round one-quarter inch thick steel plate in the center on each side. Collars are welded to this plate in order to hold the wheel tightly to the drive shaft, which is two inch diameter round steel. The main shaft is mounted on four sets of ball bearings.
By adjusting the opening of the water gate on the intake, this water wheel can be made to rotate at speeds up to 30 rpm. At this speed, it is using about 200 cubic feet per minute. The approximate volume of each bucket is about 2.5 cu. ft. so 2.5 x 8 (number of buckets) x 30 rpm x 1/3 (buckets full at one time).
To construct the wheel, each side was cut out from one sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood and bolted together by the spokes which were in turn bolted to the steel hubs. The bucket bottoms and sides were then cut out of the lighter wood and fit into place to hold the sides of the wheel together as one unit.
To house the wheel, I built a ten foot by ten foot spruce log cabin mounted on a concrete foundation. Two 10"x10" timbers rest on the cabins' sill logs and support the wheel, the apron below the wheel and the nozzle sluice in front of the wheel. Construction of the wheel was done in the house and the completed assembly was rolled carefully through the door and down the hill to the cabin and dam site.
An underground sluice-way brings the water from the pond to the wheel house. This was constructed out of rough spruce planking and it is about two feet on each side and about twenty feet long. A galvanized wire screen with one-half"x 1" mesh keeps all of the trash out of the wheel, but it is necessary to clean the screen daily, almost, to maintain the best output, and during the fall when the leaves are coming down the creek, several times a day. This cleaning is usually done with a common garden hoe, with an up and down scraping motion. Seldom is it necessary to use one's hands.

The Dam
In order to get enough head or height to operate this wheel efficiently, it was necessary for me to construct an earth fill dam over six feet in height. Total length of the dam is 150 ft. and in many places the base is over twenty feet wide. The basic fill material was rock, sand, gravel, and clay materials removed from the hillside in front of the house and hauled to the site in a home-made wheel barrow. This handy little tool was built using the discarded front fork and wheel and tire of a small dirt bike. I attached the braking mechanism to a cord which I operate with my thumb as I guide the loaded wheelbarrow down the hill. Some of our German visitors and others have also moved a few loads of dirt, especially Denis D'Amour, who was my inspiration for a large diameter wheel in the first place. When we began our first winter with this dam, it was only about four feet high, just barely high enough to provide the power necessary for this breast type wheel. After a very cold November, the temperature rose in early December and about two inches of rain fell in a few days. The central spillway which I had built to take floodwaters was not nearly large enough for the deluge, and besides this, all of this water going through had raised the creek level behind the wheel to the point where the buckets were no longer clearing the tailrace, but were dragging themselves through the water. On the second day of this, the water crested over the top of the dam and within a few minutes a gap of some fifteen feet was created. With help from Richard Thornton, I managed to get enough boulders and sand bags into the breach to get the water level back up to where we could at least get some power. We had a hard time finding enough unfrozen ground to fill our bags with, and resorted to using earth from beneath the cabin.
The following year, I built a second spillway and opened a second channel to carry flood waters away from the garden and from the rear of the wheel. Now I am able to keep the level in the old creek fairly constant by removing extra boards from the spillways as needed

The First Transmission
Anticipating a loaded wheel going at twenty rpm, I needed a transmission capable of stepping up the speed by at least 50:1 to get 1000 rpm.. This was initially achieved by mounting a 48 toothed sprocket (No.40 pitch) onto the main shaft. From here a single No.40 roller chain carried the power to a 16 tooth sprocket on a one inch shaft mounted with roller bearings (A mandrell from an old circular saw).
Then at sixty rpm the power was taken from here off a 10° inch v-pulley through a belt to a three inch pulley on another shaft, only five-eighths inch in diameter, mounted on ball bearings. This small shaft then turned at 210 rpm and on the other end of it I had a 12" aluminum pulley. A final belt to the generator brought the delivered speed to about 1260 rpm (with a two inch pulley on the generator. This provided an increase in speed of 63:1

Original Generator
This first generator was a twenty amp Delco-Remy with a maximum speed of 1500. It had a relay on it so it would cut in or start producing power at 1000 rpm. It never gave the rated amperage according to my calculations even when I ran the wheel at 25 rpm, which with this transmission (63:1) would have been 1575 rpm at the generator. It was an old second hand unit, and after one year of use it began to eat up brushes, so it was replaced by a little Japanese car alternator, with no regulator.

The weakest part in this system was the initial drive chain. I had to replace one chain each year that this operated. At twenty dollars per chain it wasn't a bad expense, but if I wanted to get more power out of my water, I knew I would definitely have to build something heavier. My output with this set up was between 150 and 180 watts. It ran almost continuously for almost three years. The small diameter shaft at 210 rpm was really too light for this amount of power also, and near the end it, too failed when a bearing loosened on the shaft. Before I noticed it, the shaft was turned down to a needle and the last pulley dropped off

New Transmission
In the summer of 1991, my good friend Denis again paid a visit and at this time he saw the necessity of a heavier transmission. The main shaft on the wheel which was a 1°" stainless steel, came loose in the collar which attached it to the wheel and the shaft was badly worn. The final 12" pulley and µ" shaft had ceased to function as described above, and we were without power for the first time in almost three years. Our battery at this time consisted of two or three automotive 12 volt batteries. They were good for a short burst, but no good for a long shut down. By this time, we had raised the water level to over six feet and had made the damn much broader and stronger.
Denis returned to Stewart, and several weeks, and many welding rods later, returned with a whole new transmission and a heavier shaft for the main wheel. The key parts of this transmission were made from a discarded street sweeper which Denis found at the Dump. This transmission gives an increase of about 100:1, in four stages. The first two stages are roller chain and the third is a double v-belt. A final belt or two belts can be used to drive one or two alternators simultaneously. All the shafts are very heavy duty and the total piece weighs over three hundred pounds. Luckily we had a helicopter nearby to fly the thing in here

Power Generation
The output is now approximately 490 watts now (35 amps at 14 volts). This is with a Chrysler automotive alternator. For a while last winter I had two small Japanese alternators going at the same time. It would slow the wheel down by a few rpm, but there was actually a decrease in power because of the additional amperage needed to excite a second field. It was a back-up feature in a way, for if one alternator stopped working, the wheel speeded up and no shutdowns were necessary. It is possible to change alternators without shutting the wheel down completely now.

First Wolf Killed - Winter 1974-75

This event took place nearly thirty years ago, near my first cabin in Northwestern British Columbia:

As 1974 came to a close, I felt warm, confident and secure in my new home. I had many things to keep me busy. I was learning new skills all the time, and the wolves were checking me out, too. Ernie was convinced that I should be able to shoot a wolf or two from my new cabin at the edge of Desiré lake. I wanted to get some wolf skins so that I could make myself a fur coat to wear in the winter. During my first winter at Bob Quinn Lake at the survey cabin, I made many efforts to lure wolves out onto the lake where I could possibly shoot them. I often saw their tracks, and sometimes heard them howling, usually at night. Once I found that a wolf had stolen a snowshoe hare from a snare I had set.
I placed some moose bones and skin on the ice about two hundred yards from the shore, and on moonlit nights, I would remove the window from the cabin, turn out my kerosene lamp and sit in the cold and dark for hours at a time, peering out onto the lake with my new 22.250 Remington rifle at the ready. Never did the wolves come out onto the ice while I was watching. They would come after I fell asleep and steal my bait. I soon realized that I would have to use some other strategy. It was mid January and the moon was full. About ten o’clock at night I heard a chorus of wolves on the far side of the lake. If only I could lure them out onto the open snow and ice covered lake, I thought! Then I remembered reading that wolves like to catch and kill sick and injured animals. Maybe, I thought, if I could convince these wolves that I was sick and in trouble, I could get them to come out of the dark forest on the other side of the lake. It sounded like there was a dozen of them at least, and they kept up their singing and it finally drove me into action.
I slung the loaded rifle over my shoulder and came out of the cabin and onto the ice. As soon as I stepped onto the frozen lake, the wolves became silent. I didn’t hear a sound and I didn’t know if they had left or if they were just quietly watching. After walking normally out onto the ice for a few strides, I changed my tactics. I began to put on my sick act. I shuffled and dragged my feet, walking in irregular small circles, falling part way to the ice occasionally, sometimes stopping altogether and I coughed weakly a few times. Within minutes the wolves began to cry out, but now their voices sounded much different than they had when I was in the cabin. Now they literally screamed and there were short fierce sounding barks preceding some of the howls.
All of the howling was coming from one spot in the timber directly across the lake and I kept up my act, sometimes spitting and coughing, but always shuffling and stumbling in their direction. When I got to the center of the lake, I noticed three or four dark forms out of the corner of my eye, streaking in and out of the moon shadows along the northwestern shore of the lake. The trees there cast long dark shadows and a few minutes later, three wolves ran swiftly and silently right onto the lake to my right. They were not traveling directly at me, but were moving in an angle from the shore to the center of the lake where I was now. The howling continued to come from the woods directly in front of me, and I faked a fall to the ice, bringing my rifle up into a firing position as I did so. The moment I fell, the three wolves on the ice, which were spaced about fifty feet apart, all changed their direction of travel and came directly at me at a full run. They were totally silent. I raised my rife, took aim on the closest wolf, which was fast closing in on me, but still at a distance of over 100 yards. I jerked on the trigger, but nothing happened. I had not released the safety mechanism. Just as well, for the way I jerked, I would have missed for sure. Then I released the safety, took a deep breath and squeezed off a shot at the lead wolf which was now running straight towards me and was no more than hundred feet away. Bang! And the wolf dropped to the ice immediately. Before I had time to get another shell in the chamber, the other two wolves turned and nearly flew to the timber on the shore where I could see nothing. I went over to the dead wolf, for indeed it was dead. My shot had pierced the chest from the front and killed this wolf almost instantly.
I dragged the wolf carcass back across the ice and I heard no more from the rest of the pack. My shot had caused them to realize that they had been fooled, I guess, and they did not make a sound, but were gone. I could feel that they were still watching from their hiding places but I was sure that they would not come back out on the ice after me now.
When I got back to the cabin with my dead wolf, I was tired. It was near midnight and the skinning job would have to wait until morning, so I left the dead animal laying on the floor just inside the door of the cabin. It was a large female of a tan color. She looked like a giant coyote in color, but she weighed well over 100 pounds. She smelled pretty awful, too, with the smell I have come to associate with wolves. It is a wild, musky, strong, fecal kind of smell with a hint of rotten meat to it. I was tired and so I did manage to sleep somehow that night.
The first thing I did in the morning was to check out the tracks that the wolves and I had left on the lake. I returned to the scene of the ‘crime’, so to speak. Here I found that, unknown to me the previous night, the pack of wolves had split into three groups of three or four each. There was the tracks of the three that I had seen on the lake. Then there were the wolves that continued to howl from their position directly across the lake, but there were also tracks of four more wolves that had come out onto the ice from the east and behind where I was in the center of the lake. While I was taking aim on the wolf that I had killed, these other wolves were bearing down on my prone form from the direction of the cabin. They had me surrounded, and I didn’t know it.
I spent the next day skinning out this wolf. It was the first wolf I had ever skinned and I wanted to be very careful not to make any cuts in the skin. I skinned her out completely, trying to ignore the stink. When I was done with the skinning, I made a stretching board out of an eight foot long piece of plywood and when the skin was on this board, it was only ten inches short of the end. Eighty-six inches from nose tip to tail tip. I intended to send this skin out to a professional tanner and so I carefully removed all of the flesh and fat that I could. By four thirty p.m., it was growing dark and my job was just about complete. I dragged the naked carcass out and left it just outside the cabin door. Then I fixed my supper and after that was consumed, I spent some time brushing out the fur. It was beautiful and I thought of the nice and warm coat I would be able to make out of it.
I wrote some letters home that night and then lay down in bed to sleep. The sky had clouded over and the night was dark and sometime before midnight I was awakened by my dog, Smoky, who gave a low growl from his spot under the bed. I listened carefully in the silence and within ten minutes I heard a very low, deep throated moaning wolf that sounded to me as if it was about a half mile from the cabin off to the west. Then it was silent again. Fifteen minutes or so passed, and then I heard it again, just one voice, very deep and throaty and almost a moan. This time it came from the same direction, but it was louder, closer. I lay in bed, wondering what I could or should do. Smoky continued to growl very softly and I tried to silence her. It was far too dark this night to try to shoot another wolf, and I lay in bed, just listening. Another half hour passed and the moaning, deep howl sounded again. This time it was much closer, but I decided that there was no way I was going out onto the ice again. Too dark. Can’t shoot if you can’t see! Another long silence.
I began to drift back to sleep and Smoky was also silent. Then I was roused to full wakefulness by the loudest bass howl I had ever heard. The glass in the cabin windows vibrated. I pulled the blankets over my head and thought I must be dreaming. Smoky remained absolutely quiet. A minute later, I heard one loud ‘woof’ just outside the door, where I had left the skinned carcass. Then silence again. Should I shoot through the door?, I thought, no, I’m dreaming, so I’ll pull the covers up higher and sleep. I did sleep, too, and in the morning I stepped out the door to see very large wolf tracks all around the cabin and right up to the door. So I wasn’t dreaming after all!
I heard no more of wolves for a few weeks, but I frequently found tracks that showed that a large wolf was following me wherever I happened to go on my snowshoes. I checked my rabbit snares each day, and there were always fresh wolf tracks over my snowshoe tracks when I came around the next day. In late March I again heard this deep throated wolf moaning from across the lake. I gave him the name Beelzebub and in my mind I thought of him as the avenging wolf, waiting his chance to bring me down.

Skin of the Wolf

Great Balls of Fire

Cool and wet month of May, so far

Been so busy lately that I haven't even thought about writing in this blog. The Sweet Williams are blooming now and there is also so much transplanting to do that I am finding plenty to do. Last Saturday, Elona went with me to the Farmer's Market in Charlottesville and we had the best sales ever! The weather was just great, not too hot, but very sunny and the crowd was large right from about eight am until noon, when we closed up shop.
On Saturday night there was a party at the conference site and I attended more as an observer than as a participant. Some of the young folks put on a really lively fire show. Ezra, Anja, and Kate did the flaming hula-hoops. Elona used her "poi" (flaming balls of fire attached by a short chain to her wrists, and then later, Ezra, John, Daniel and Elona did some fire "breathing". The moon was nearly full and the campfire was cozy. The music wasn't too loud or offensive, and some of the dancers were using "light sticks" to accentuate their arm movements.
The weather has been very good for transplanting. Lots of rain now for several days with some spells in between when I could get out and work. Transplanted hundreds of asters, celosia, and portulaca.
The columbines that I started from seed last summer have also been blooming. We have a row or two of the double (spurless) ones as well as two rows of the tall McKana's giants in mixed colors. I am a bit disappointed with the tall ones since most of them are shades of yellow. I had hope for some blues and reds. Tomorrow we may start to harvest some of the garlic.
I have ordered 100 rock-cornish chicks from a hatchery in Pennsylvania. They should arrive around June 1. Another batch in the incubator should be hatching about a week later. Caught a couple more possums. Last night either a woodchuck or a rabbit decided that he liked my white Echinacea. I now have a trap set for him, but it's hard to lure them in at this time of year. There are so many green things for them to eat everywhere.

Anja with a flaming hoop

Richmond Farmer's Market

May 5 was the opening day for the 17th Street Farmer's market

and so Elona and I loaded up the old van with hammocks, tofu, tinnery and seeds from Acorn, my wooden roll-top boxes, wheat weavings, dried "apple" gourds, Stella's pottery faces (mugs and pots) and hit the road about six a.m. I just don't have any flowers to sell right now, so we made do with what we had.
The facilities there are great, but we were both a bit dissapointed with the size of the crowd.
Today, Saturday, we did it again, and our total sales were better than Thursday, but not quite what I expected for a city the size of Richmond.
So that's more driving than I've done in quite a while, since it takes about one hour each way to Richmond. Tonight I'm winding down a little and looking forward to a more relaxing day tomorrow. In the early a.m., I'll bake a big batch of cinnamon-raisin buns for the community, and in the afternoon, I'll be giving wheat weaving lessons in the courtyard.
The weather has continued to be a bit cooler than it uusually is this time of year. This morning I had to scrape ice off of the windshield! Soon,though, I'll probably be complaining about the heat.

Overdue Installment

Well, it's about time I sat down and wrote something original for this page. The weather has been improving each day, but, alas, the daffodils are all finished for the year. Last week I didn't even go to the Farmer's market since I didn't have enough flowers to make it pay. It's a slow time for flower production. I'm waiting for the Sweet Williams and columbine to start flowering. A few Sweet William and some of the double columbine are already opening, but not in any great quantities yet. It's a good time to get the rest of the flower beds cleaned up and planted.
The third batch of baby chicks is doing very well. Twenty-nine of them in this batch. Last night I switched roosters between two flocks of birds. I want to hatch some more really heavy birds before the six heavy hens decide to stop laying. On Monday morning I butchered five older hens that had gone broody. We haven't had chicken for supper for some time now so it will be a treat.
I think I am finally over the head-chest cold that had been plaugeing me for the past two weeks or more. I sure hope so.
It is a beautiful time of year, everywhere I am sure. Here the apple trees in the orchard are in full bloom, the wild dogwoods in the forest are wide open, and most of the trees now suddenly have a new set of leaves on them. The color of the new leaves is such a pure green!
Much to do, any only so much time. Tomorrow I'll get over to the big field at Lawson and plant the rest of the gladiolas. Today I'll find plenty to do at New Holland. The new beds there are coming along very well.
The community is back into making more hammocks again, after a slow winter. Our labor quota has gone back up to forty something hours per week, after being at 38.5 for several months.
Haven't caught any coons or possums for a while now. I got the electric fence charger fixed by the manufacturer, free of charge. Now it's doing its job.
Egg production has already reached its peak for the spring already and is beginning top drop. It will be interesting to see just how long we can go before we have to buy any eggs.

Drawn with photoshop