Daniel Varnell

As the saying goes if it were a snake it would have bit me. I dont know why that didnt occue to me that is the perfect answer I can harness 100% of the water for electricity and 100% for house hold use thanks Andrew that is the perfect answer to my delima.

Thanks Andrew that is pretty much what I suspected but wanted make sure someone out there didn't know of some setup that would work. I considered the holding tank at the spring but since it also provides my home with water I am concerned about diverting to much of the water away from the household water supply. I think I might build a pelton wheel and hook it to an old car alternator just to trickle charge some batteries maybe I can at least light my chicken coop and maybe the tractor shed?

A few more details - 100% of the water is being captured and piped down the mtn. to the holding tank. My family of 5 are the only ones using the spring, it feeds the tank that supplies all our water, the spring puts out enough water to keep the tank full and over flow the tank into another pipe that feeds our pond at a rate of .25 GPM. So currently I have a 2" pipe running about 100' with 40' of vertical fall and .25 GPM of water running into a pond I want to harness this to create electricity. I guess what I am asking is what is the best setup to extract the most energy from this amount of water i.e. turgo wheel or pelton wheel? What kind of generator would work best at the realativly low RPM I expect to produce? Should I try to run more than one nozzle or do you think that would require more GPM? Does anyone have a hydroelectric setup with similar conditions that would like to share their experiences?

East side in Dear Head Cove.

I have a spring on my farm in NE Alabama about 800' feet above the house on the side of Sand Mtn. it is fed to a 1000 gallon holding tank about 100' above the house which supplies all our water. My question is would it be possible to catch the over flow from the holding tank; which is diverted to a pond, to run a hydroelectric generator? The site has about 35' vertical drop from the holding tank to the old grist mill I will be using to house the generator/battery bank were the water can then spill out into my pond (which leaks but thats a different issue). The issue is that of flow rate, the over flow from the tank is about 1/5 of a gallon a minute, is that enough GPM to generate any power with that amount of fall? If not what if I diverted some of the water higher up the mtn. so it had 75' of vertical fall and maybe increased the flow to 1 GPM would that be enough? What do you think would be the minimum flow rate with the amount of vertical fall I have to achieve any substantial output from the hydroelectric generator?

I have a spring on my farm in NE Alabama about 800' feet above the house on the side of Sand Mtn. it is fed to a 1000 gallon holding tank about 100' above the house which supplies all our water. My question is would it be possible to catch the over flow from the holding tank; which is diverted to a pond, to run a hydroelectric generator? The site has about 35' vertical drop from the holding tank to the old grist mill I will be using to house the generator/battery bank were the water can then spill out into my pond (which leaks but thats a different issue). The issue is that of flow rate, the over flow from the tank is about 1/5 of a gallon a minute, is that enough GPM to generate any power with that amount of fall? If not what if I diverted some of the water higher up the mtn. so it had 75' of vertical fall and maybe increased the flow to 1 GPM would that be enough? What do you think would be the minimum flow rate with the amount of vertical fall I have to achieve any substantial output from the hydroelectric generator?