From China with love

It must be a Glesgie thing, me I’m sat at the kitchen table trying to update the blog with wifey and MiL rolling about the place in stitches. They’re watching ‘Still Game’ and have just by the three foot jobby in the toilet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMrSZ76tEnA

 

Way above my head I’m afraid

Problems with the ‘Powerspout’

Anyway, it’s been a pure peach of a day here and I decided to make the most of it by wandering over the hill and clearing some air out of the Powerspout. I’d turned the turbine off weeks ago, quite simple because we couldn’t use all the electricity and I figured today would be a good day to clear some air out of the penstock.

It’s a bit of a PITA as it involves a 2” Honda water pump and my old Northern Diver dry suit.

Basically I just connect the pump up, start it then open the bleed valves but it does involve quite a bit of trekking about the hills and hanging around.

Here’s the old boundary wall between North Raasay and Arnish

and here’s home for the next few months

I got the penstock all cleared of air then started up the New Zealand manufactured turbine http://www.powerspout.com/ only to find that the output was about half of what it should be. Normally my hydro turbine produces just shy of 800w but upon restarting it after its rest it was only producing around 350w A walk over the hill to the turbine itself soon identified the ‘issue’,

 

only one of the two jets was working, the lower one just spraying a trickle onto the pelton cups that drive the alternator. Of course I’d no tools so another trip over the hill was required to get some.

 

As far as hydro turbines go, you can’t really get better than Michael Lawley’s ‘Powerspout’ turbine for the money. Based on a ‘Fischer and Paykel’ washing machine motor and producing up to 1kW these turbines are cheap, well supported and pretty reliable. I don’t pretend to be any expert on these things but I’ve got a ‘Stream Engine’  http://www.microhydropower.com/ operated a ‘Navitron’ http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_detail.php?proID=173&catID=81 and installed a ‘Harris turbine’ http://www.lopowerengineering.com/ . They’re all good and do what they say but one seems to be the best value for money of them all and is available from Hugh Piggott at http://scoraigwind.com/ .

When I purchased mine from Hugh some years ago I bought spare pelton spoons and bearings , mainly because of the free shipping with the turbine. However you get a good toolkit with it that includes a special spanner for the nozzles.

Well, that would be the cause of the blockage then

You don’t actually need to remove the clear panel to access the lower nozzle but you can see better with it removed and it’s no hassle.

That’s more like it, two nicely placed jets of water bouncing off the cover, so with that all ‘hunky dory’ Molly and I went beachcombing.

A good looking plank turned out to be rotten in the middle but will still make two fine shelves in the barn.

A porpoise had also suffered the same fate as the plank.

 

 

 

That done it was up to the barn to check out the output of the turbine,

 

which was still low, but an hour or two later had risen to over 700W.

A spell of clearing drains around the back of the barn saw me to darkness and beyond after which I reluctantly headed home. It had been a fine day with a good deal achieved and I wasn’t ready for calling it a day. Luckily I had a wee parcel from China waiting for me at ‘number 3’

an LED ‘self powered’ voltmeter from Lilly in Szechwan Province http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Red-LED-Display-Panel-Meter-Mini-Digital-Two-wire-Voltmeter-DC-5V-To-120V-35-/390783176788?ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:GB:1123 . The last one of these I bought cost me £25!!! this one was £1.85 including air freight!! but it gets better. I actually ordered this in November to replace the one in the kitchen, not that there was anything wrong with that,

 

just that I needed to remove the 12v one and that powered the 48v one.

When it didn’t arrive after a couple of weeks I can’t say I noticed or was even too concerned, it was after all not much more than the cost of a 1st class stamp. However I got several emails off the delightful Lilly in China apologising for the delay and even offering a refund. I replied saying ‘no worries’ and she emailed yet again offering a refund, this time saying that if it turned up I could reimburse her. Anyway I said that I’m sure it would turn up, and turn up it did today, so this evening I fitted it.