YOUR OWN WATER-POWER PLANT
Plans for pelton and overshot water wheels.
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Gravity turns the overshot wheel. (See page 28). Water-carrying buckets on one side overbalance the empty ones opposite
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by C.D. BASSETT
RELATED CONTENT
REPRINTED COURTESY OF POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY/ 1947 POPULAR
SCIENCE PUBLISHING CO., INC.
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PART FOUR: HOMEMADE WHEEL DELIVERS OVER 3 HP.
Though one of man's oldest prime movers, a water wheel is
still a fascinating piece of machinery. Perhaps this is
because it appears comprehensible at a glance (although an
efficient wheel is actually a product of subtle and
inconspicuous design refinements), and because it seems to
be a way of getting power for nothing. The homemade wheel
described here was especially designed for this series on
harnessing small streams (see MOTHER NO. 13, pages 23-33),
and will reward a careful craftsman by delivering years of
constant service. It's particularly suited for an
installation having a moderate head (25' to 60') and
relatively small flow (.45 to .75 cubic feet per second).
Subsequent installments will describe the con struction of
wheels suited for lesser heads of water and other varied
conditions.
As is apparent from the drawings, this is an impulse wheel,
driven by the impulses produced as water strikes revolving
blades or buckets. In a perfectly designed wheel, the water
strikes at high speed, exhausts its energy in driving the
wheel to which the bucket is attached, and then falls free
of the wheel.
Known as a Pelton wheel, this type developed from the
"hurdy gurdy", a paddle wheel used in California by the
forty-niners. The hurdy-gurdy was a wheel that rotated in a
vertical plane, had flat vanes fixed around its
circumference, and was driven by the force of water
striking the vanes. It was not an efficient machine, but it
was simple to construct. Then an engineer named Lester
Pelton substituted a cup-shaped, divided bucket for each of
the vanes, and by that step added a high degree of
efficiency to the wheel's other virtues.
No single wheel will meet all operating requirements, but
some will perform under a reasonably wide range of
conditions. The following table indicates the r.p.m. and
horsepower output that will be delivered by this wheel
under given conditions of head and flow. The latter is
measured in cubic feet per second:
Thus, if a survey of your stream indicates a head and flow
close to these values, this Pelton wheel will fit neatly
into your plans.
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