Hydro olive oil / flour mill PORTUGAL

Hi there ,recently acquired an ancient and rather lovely set of victoriana engineering ....was water powered with a good leat needing minimal restoration the shaft driven equipments is now powered by an old style 3 phase motor . Would like to put a turgid wheel generator at the weir end of the system and restore the mill to original specs ..it was still working 15 years ago and the equipment can all be turned over ! Am thinking that it would be a fun winter project! anyone have a working knowlege of this sort of installation ? Anyone fancy a fiddle around later in the year !? I have a good engineering background , But would be more fun with someone to bounce especially if they knew their way around a n oil / grape / cider press .

That's a really cool idea! I have no engineering background, but I can BUMP this thread to the top of recent topics for you!

Awesome please do it !😀thanks Nicole .We have been off grid in France for 25yrs and are in the process of setting up here in Portugal on nearly 8 hectares of partially derelict farm .So everything to do on the permie side What fun should keep us interested forever .Lovely to discover this site and to find that there are like minded people around and about .thanks again for your support Ivan havard

Hi Ivan;  Welcome to Permies!
I've added your post to the Iberia forum. Hopefully some mechanically inclined permie will see it and want to help play with your new / old toy !  
I know that I would want to help if only you were in Montana!

Maybe some pictures would help spur some discussion?

There is lots of info on this site from the UK. They do do restorations but do some digging on their site they have tons of technical info on rebuilding. Lots of Mills are being restored, such a great thing, best of luck!

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/pondlilymill/index.html

Hi there, I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS. HOWEVER. Have you heard of LowTech Magazine? I believe "they" (Kris DeDecker) are somewhere in northern Spain. This is something ancient from 2013, but "they" are engineering types.  Here ya go: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/08/direct-hydropower.html

Wow thanks for all the support and info just can't wait to get to it ,but got other stuff to do first, irrigation to work out etc !playing with water is such fun ( pisces water dragon speaking there😅)!
Really excited to have an abundance of water that doesn't smell of chemicals and have a bill.attached !
My enthusiasm knows no bounds !!
Will be trying to fill a huge deposito with water without using pump ..might be possible not sure yet ,will have to fight my way upstream and see if I can get above it .Shades of African Queen (showing my age a bit there )
Regards and stuff Ivan

I used to live with a spring that had over 100 foot drop to the sea level.  So I have tinkered around with a lot of ideas on how to harvest that potential.
I asked Google about  turgid wheel  and was  directed to turgo wheel which pictured a vertical shaft generator if that is what you had in mind.
I concluded that to get the maximum power from a small stream with a horizontal wheel the water should be deflected back against the buckets of the wheel at the top and continue pushing on the wheel as it come under the bottom of the wheel. That puts force into the axial for about 5/8 of the rotation whereas water shooting directly into the buckets of the wheel would only be exerting force for at most 3/8 of the rotation.

Hi Hans ,Ive already got  leat , chutes and 2 wheels in place 1 chute 1 for the flour mill and a bigger one with larger wheel for the oil press ..
My idea is a small turgid wheel at th far end of the leat so that I can get a  small fairly constant supply running 1 to 1.5 kva max .although even less would be good ! Thinking is don't want to divert water down the leat unless I am pressing oil or milling something as I'd like to keep it in the river unless I'm irrigating from the leat !
My thinking is that less wear on the water wheels is good and I can use all the leat water to irrigate the terraces between the river and the leat without messing with the hydro power .. main electical supply will be solar and maybe a small wind turbine (just cos I like to see them spinning 😆 .thanks very much for your input the wheels are undershot .kind regards Ivan