Chrissy Star wrote:Hi, I live on top of a ridge which protrudes the farthest of all surrounding ridges...
The ridge falls down to a valley either side & the house-site sits right on top. Wind gathers in the valley below & with extremely high force, whips to the top of the ridge where the house sits. The site is made up of 3 rectangular sheds which force the wind through the middle causing wind damage to trees & plants. I have watched the wind snap a tree in half which was 10m high & had a 20cm trunk diameter!
Image: 1m contours
How can I reduce the wind velocity?
Maybe a windbreak - where? The majority of damaging wind enters from the south-east valley...on this side the hill drops down after the building. The drop will reduce the windbreak height & drop effectiveness dramatically.
I am thinking of maybe installing some DIY wind turbines to reduce the velocity.
Has anyone had success with DIY wind turbines handling bursts of high velocity wind?
All comments & suggestions are GREATLY appreciated, thank you!
You might try building large (10' to 20' high) horizontal "snow fences" like they use along I-80 in Wyoming. You'll want to place them below your ridge so that they provide the turbulence to break the force of the wind that comes up the slope. These are not solid fences. the allow just
enough wind to pass through the horizontal slats so that the force of the laminar flow of the prevailing winds are turned into the air equivalent of a breaking wave.
Windbreaks of trees can also be used for this purpose, but (somewhat counter-intuitively) you keep the lower part of the trees/shrubs trimmed so that the flow of the wind going "under" the windbreak causes the same rolling turbulence as the
fence produces. At first, you may need to build the
fence first to protect the trees until they are big enough to fend for themselves.
You may need to make several parallel rows along the contour lines to achieve the wind control that you are seeking. Several smaller installations, staggered so that the wind is bounced back and forth between the windbreaks, causing more force-killing turbulence.
You can use the smaller vertical snow-fencing, but the turbulence effect is only effective for a much shorter horizontal distance downwind of the fence, and, being much smaller, the lightweight fences are more easily destroyed by very strong winds.
See this YouTube
video:[youtube] [youtube]https://youtu.be/0IPbYlOeBWk[/youtube][/youtube]
The larger installations (along the "Snow-Chi-Min" trail (as the I-80 in Wyoming is nicknamed) use 2" x 12" boards and very heavy timbers. They are not cheap.
Here is a PDF that explains the math behind designing this type of snow fencing:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1982/860/860-003.pdf
I hope this is useful to you.
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