Well it turned out not such a bad day after a bit of a shaky start. There were some pretty nasty showers all around us but we seemed to miss most of them at the north end and the ones that did hit us did so whilst we were undercover so I managed to get all done that I’d planned, I use the word planned in a very loose context, what I should really say is that I actually finished something today that I’d started doing without being distracted, which is in itself worth opening a bottle of wine for. Mrs C and the Dude went to Kyle for the Dudes swimming lesson but his pal who’s staying with us for the weekend opted to stay with me and do ‘man stuff’, actually I think it was the prospect of lots of trips to Torran and back on the quad that swung it. I’m busy fitting a ‘Harris hydro’ turbine to the http://www.unique-cottages.co.uk/cottages/westcoast/skye/raasay_schoolhouse ( for some reason I can’t link to this so you’ll have to do it ) Like most things I do it takes along while as work on the ferry keeps interrupting all my wee projects. The ‘Harris’ turbine is a high head, low flow hydro turbine designed to generate power at 24v DC.The idea being to charge up the battery bank at the ‘old schoolhouse’ , at the moment this is done automatically with a ‘Lister ST2, 7kw’ diesel generator and the fitting of this turbine should cut down dramatically on it’s usage. It will be supplemented with 2 solar panels on the roof which should reduce diesel dependancy even further. The turbine had been fitted and the pipe laid over the previous few months (check out hydro category) and today we were securing the penstock pipe and sorting out the header tank which needed a few mods.
The first job was to get the pipe running evenly downwards with no dips or humps, any low points could collect debris and any high points could trap air. A few fence posts, allot of trees and the odd rock ensured a smooth passage of water down the 200m pipe. After that we turned our attention to the water supply that fed the header tank. The tank itself being a standard 25 gal plastic water tank and the filter/screen being one of Tesco’s veg trays. Originally I’d fed it from the bottom of ‘DDK designs’ most excellent dam but found this was prone to blocking in floods. So I came up with this contraption.
A 90 degree bend with a short length of pipe attached and 5, 25mm holes drilled in it just below the height of the dam over flow.
This went on the inside of the dam on the end of the pipe that feeds the header tank, ( it needs a bit more work on it to secure it against spates)
but it did have the desired effect of reducing flow into the header tank and filtering further cr4p out of the system. Once all this was done there was nothing left other than to test it out. The armoured cable still needs to be run to the battery bank so we just put a meter and a 60w bulb on the altenator output wires and low and behold IT WORKS !
Being somewhat electrically challenged I was well impressed, not bad for a washing machine drum, drain base, fish cage float, tesco tray and some BT ducting! though I couldn’t have done it without guidance from Hugh Piggot of
Hugh Piggott – Scoraig Wind Electric
Who supplied all the proper parts and phone back up.
As for what was left of the day it was just a case of feeding the pigs ( who seem to have spent all day in their beds ) and tidying up the mess I’d left in my workshop. Mrs C arrived home after catching the 4:15 ferry complete with 3 apple trees, 1 plum and 1 pear tree. We had some of Jacks chops for dinner then I spent the rest of the evening torn between my laptop and a bottle of red wine. Well it is the week end!
