Hydro and wind power

[crafty2002]

I am thinking of trying to build a water wheel at my daughters place to make electricity. I have seen several sites that showed how to build an alternator from scratch but can't find a single one now that I am getting more serious. I should have book marked them but I am not so good with the computor. We didn't have them when I was a kid, lol.
I have found some magnets I think I want to try but have no idea how to figure out the power they could make in a set up like Hugh Piget's wind mill generators.

I also have seen some home brewed wind mills that make their peak power at 140 RPM which would allow me to keep the gearing down to about 3:1, but I can't find them now either.

The magnets I am looking at are wedge shaped, 3" long and 2 1/2" at the wide part and 1/2" thick. But they are also $30 each. Ouch. That hurt just to say it, lol.
$720 for 24 of them. Ouch again.
The way I want to build the water wheel and generator the magnets will about equal the cost of everything else for the whole thing, not counting the batteries and invertor. A reall big ouch there but it will be a steady power producers so the battery bank can be a lot smaller than for a wind mill or solar.

Can any one tell me some good site that deal with building your own generator/alternator????
Thanks
Dennis

[tomato204]

I will look for some build-it-yerself sites but in the meantime, perhaps you should decide if you want an alternator or a dc generator. You will need the permanent magnets, or at least some, (I don't know about 24), for the generator. Speaking of which you can get an automobile alternator for a whole lot less than 700- something bucks and start with that. It will take the current to get the fields going from the battery bank. You don't say how much drop there is to the stream you're using or volume of water or the diameter of the wheel that will collect the power from the water. Have you taken your measurements?
edit: Here is a site that you might already have since you mentioned H. Piggot
http://www.otherpower.com/guemes_notes.html

[tomato204]

Look thru all these, there's a bunch. Somebody else more able to answer you specific questions will be along soon....
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=hand+built+alternato r

[MountainDreams]

Does this help?

http://www.green-trust.org/hydro.htm

Sharon

[jott]

I would say keep doing research, but as a first step find some cheap magnets and make a small gen that you can play with and experiment. That way you can learn a lot about what works and you can find more what you need. *I have some magnets from www.kjmagnetics.com that cost me less then $20 for 25 and they have been fun to play with. *I’m working on making a small gen now, if only I had more time.

Also if you have never worked with neodymium magnets before play with some small ones first, the big ones will crush bone if you find your hand between 2 of them.
*

[crafty2002]

Thanks for the replies. I have been busy looking at the sites you all posted and finding some good stuff too.
Let me explain a little more about the situation here.
My daughter has 20+ acres that has 3 spring fed ponds on it. There is 5 or 6 springs that feed them and they all end up into the lower pond and the water coming from the exhaust pipe from that will fill up a 6 gallon bucket in less than a second. I figure it has a good 500 gallons per minute flow.
I can redo the pipe and bank it up more and get 30-40 feet of head from it.
I want to build a water wheel simular to a bicycle wheel. I have a piece of 24" pipe about 4 feet long to use as a hub. I also have some 4" x 1/4" pipe to use for the axle.
I will use 10' lengths of EMT conduit for the spokes and 1/16" plate metal for the rim and buckets.
Then I will rip 2" pipe and bend it to form a pulley around the circumference of the water wheel for a rope/belt.
Years ago they built water wheels up to 300-400 feet from the actual mill and used a rope to transfer the power from pulley to pulley. So that is my idea to transfer the power closer to the house.
I get two things from this. Maybe as much as 500 foot less wire for losses and to save cost, plus I get to use smaller wire. Thay will save a lot right there and this is on a budget even if the magnets cost 700+ bucks. I still want to do it right but keep the cost as low as possible.
"IF" and that is a big word here. If I do it, it will be a 24' water wheel. That is dictated by the materails and ease of doing it. A 24" hub, 10' spokes and a 12" rim for the buckets makes a 24 foot wheel, or close to it.
I was in the Univeristy of Va., hospital with double pnemonia and not expected to live when this idea came to me. I was slap out of it and when I came around it was all I could think about. I called several of the math and engineering proffessors there after I was able to and talked to them a lot.
They all, that took the time to look at it, said this formula is correct.
At the time is was about a turbine somewhere up north and I can't find the book it was in but it was going with a water wheel against a turbine. Every single one of them that answered me said I was right.
OK. I ma not sure exactly how much water we have to work with but lets say, and I think I am close, we have 500 gallons a second.
Now that is not a large creak. It blew my mind after looking at the flow in the creek that it filled the buckets up so fast. It actually took it out of my hand the first time. That's like catching 50 lbs in less than a second.
I had to stick the bucket under there on the ground. But the creak doesn't even look that stroung.
OK, 500 (gal. per minute) x 8.34(weight of each gallon) x 12 foot (radiaus of the wheel to determine torque) > 5252 (conversion of torque to Horse Power) x .746(number of watts per H.P. = 7.1 KWs.

What I need to do is try to build an alternator that will make that much power, not over heat and burn out, and I would like it to be as high as DC voltage as I can make it and then feed a battery bank that equals that voltage and then run through an inverter to the house.

Any extra can be used for heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Or even ariators for the ponds so we get bigger fish,lol.
Thanks again for the post and sites you gave me. It looks like you have to be a book worm to find out how to figure out the number of coils and size to se what volts etc. would be. ???
Maybe if I keep trying I will learn.
Very seldom do I start something without knowing it will work first. This one will be the hardest.

Thanks again for the help!
Dennis