Has anybody who has not got a water meter ever thought about installing a small hydro electric generator to reap back some of the water and lecy bills?
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5 years ago
hydro electric
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5 years ago
they were available in the 1940s. One could perhaps charge batteries with one eventually. If you have electricity they're pointless.
NT
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5 years ago
not much point then....
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5 years ago
would keep your drains fresh though ......
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5 years ago
Rudyard Kipling had one at his house in Sussex. Reportedly, he asked an expert (Sir William Willcox) for advice. Willcox had just completed what he described as "a trifling affair on the Nile" - the first Aswan Dam.
He got enough power to charge batteries for lighting each evening, which was what he wanted.
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5 years ago
How often is there a flow of water through the pipes your side of the water meter. How much would a flush of the toilet generate? Could such a device also reduce your water pressure to an extent that combi boilers and electric showers fail to work?
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5 years ago
Some of it was still in place when I visited the house many years ago, including the cast iron turbine - which I remember as it surprised me as I'd been expecting a water wheel would have been used in (I think) 1902.
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5 years ago
The implication was that people *without* a water meter could run them 24x7
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5 years ago
Noting we have moved away from the OPs suggestion into more practical territory the use of Turbines became popular around that period to replace Water Wheels on many mills around that time. Near to where I grew up a mill that by the time I knew it in the mid 60?s was no longer milling but had two turbines in place, one had been converted in the 40?s to drive a DC generator but that by the time I knew it had fallen into disuse with the coming of mains electric. I last visited the site about 5 years ago and the turbines were still in place but the supply leat and sluices had collapsed beyond easy repair and due to the sale of land leat and mill are now in different ownership making any attempt to reinstate difficult. Can?t access the location now as the person I knew there has died.
Not too far from where I am there is a functioning Mill with turbines installed in 1904 that is open to the public.
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I have to say it just doesn?t seem as atmospheric as one with a traditional water wheel,fortunately there is one of those not far away either and we get our flour from them.
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Production was halted this summer due to water shortage so anyone depending on small scale hydro should account for that possibility. And that is before you work out how such a mill may only provide around 10 kilowatt so people used to mains supply would have to use personal demand management in the household.
GH
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5 years ago
Andy Burns explained on 01/12/2018 :
With in mind that all that water has to be treated and paid for to be pumped - it seems a very inefficient and wasteful idea.
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5 years ago
It was refurbished (by some young Royal Engineers) and was working when I visited, probably about 25 years ago.
I think one problem was that there wasn't much water - still isn't - and they are not allowed to use river water, just two springs.
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5 years ago
The restoration was actually in the 1970s. I think the turbine is still working.
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5 years ago
There are isolated properties with no mains electric and water from a very long pipe going up the hill. Often the pressure is considerable verging on dangerous and the supply is virtually unlimited. It would work for them I guess.
Bill
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5 years ago
Thanks. I've worked out that I visited in 1971 so very probably before the restoration.
And with apologies for yet more on Kipling, I checked my copy of his autobiography which had much more in the scheme than I'd recalled:
"The House was not of a type to present to servants by lamp or candle-light. Hence electricity, which in 1902 was a serious affair. We chanced, at a week-end visit, to meet Sir William Willcocks, who had designed the Assouan Dam ? a trifling affair on the Nile. Not to be over-crowed, we told him of our project for declutching the water-wheel from an ancient mill at the end of our garden, and using its microscopical mill-pond to run a turbine. That was enough! ?Dam?? said he. ?You don?t know anything about dams or turbines. I?ll come and look.? That Monday morn he came with us, explored the brook and the mill-sluit, and foretold truly the exact amount of horse-power that we should get out of our turbine ??Four and a half and no more.? But he called me Egyptian names for the state of my brook, which, till then, I had deemed picturesque. ?It?s all messed up with trees and bushes. Cut ?em down and slope the banks to one in three.? ?Lend me a couple of Fellahîn Battalions and I?ll begin,? I said.
He said also; ?Don?t run your light cable on poles. Bury it.? So we got a deep-sea cable which had failed under test at twelve hundred volts ? our voltage being one hundred and ten ? and laid him in a trench from the Mill to the house, a full furlong, where he worked for a quarter of a century. At the end of that time he was a little fatigued, and the turbine had worn as much as one-sixteenth of an inch on her bearings. So we gave them both honourable demission ? and never again got anything so faithful.
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5 years ago
10kW is about 40A, so demand management would not be a challenge. I still remember a load of flats each on a 5A supply. That was easy enough to live with once you knew how, but I don't think any of the occupants did.
NT
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5 years ago
It might compensate for the excessive "water rates" charged to people without meters, which you can't challenge as rates don't exist any more.
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5 years ago
It only goes to show how challeneged some poeole are mathematically to even think that the cost of the generator would ever be repaid.
Same as those roads that would extract energy from passing cars...
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5 years ago
beg your pardon ....I have a C in higher maths 1970 ....tee hee
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5 years ago
Our water has a head of about 120metres and is regulated down at the stopcock. But we do have mains electricity, so I don't bother to make use of the excess 6bar.
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5 years ago
With only a Lister generator available that gave about 2.0 kW at a push it was something I initially grew up with as well though to be fair heating ,hot water and most cooking was provided by a Rayburn. For when that was allowed to rest in Summer a small Belling cooker could be used,this had a selector switch that would only allow ring,hot plate and oven combinations so it could run off a 5 amp socket.
Mothers first washing machine could only be run if the heating element was turned off so she was grateful when the mains arrived.
I don?t think people who have always had 3kW available from one or more sockets in a couple of rooms simultaneously realise how much physical machinery would be needed to provide it from ones own resources which puts ideas like generating power from the kitchen tap right into daft idea territory. A Watermill like depicted in Constable paintings for every household puts it into perspective.
Still isn?t the idea of getting a smart meter into every household is so the skill of personal demand management is learned my the masses or they will pay exorbitantly in the future to continue to switch things on at the most conventional time like we can now.
GH