Installing the 4 inch Micro Hydro Unit

i'm seeing a lot of air being pulled in that thing is really flying now welcome to land of house i'm seth i'm partnered with langston alternative power to test out this four inch micro hydro unit i'm kind of the guinea pig on this one so hopefully we'll get a lot of things done so the concept here is there is a three-phase motor which here's your three wires here and inside of the y-fitting is an impeller so water is going to spin that which spins this and that's where your power comes out of so to get this thing working i'm going to use a couple of configurations the first one is going to be through siphon so i will take this 90 and turn it up fill that with water and i'll have to install a down pipe which is this one onto the other end of the the y fitting down here and then i'll cap use this cap here that down pipe so i can turn this up fill it with water turn it back into the water remove the cap i know it's a lot going on and that should pull a siphon over the dam down here at the pond so with all that being said we're going to go ahead and get this down to the water and if it runs properly what i'm going to do next is i've got a 100 watt dump load there's our fitting for the the light bulb i've also got a charge controller hopefully it has the readout for wattage we'll have to hook up a battery all kinds of fun stuff but anyway let's go ahead and load this up on the four-wheeler head down to the water and see what we get be sure to subscribe because i'll be using this for several different tests i'm going to test different heights of the down pipe we're going to try feeding water directly to the unit instead of siphon and a host of other things this thing rides pretty good on a four-wheeler i like that all right so here is the water feature we're going to be using for this micro hydro there's an eight foot drop off over here and the flow rate i'm assuming is somewhere around 60 or so gallons a minute maybe more maybe less not entirely sure but luckily the water level is right here on the rock so we don't have to siphon over very much before it can head on down here so as you can see it's kind of scary and i'm gonna have to travel down in snake land to get to the uh the cap down here to start this thing so uh the only way to start and stop the unit is to uh turn the siphon the tea into the water or out of the water so i did bring some wire nuts to cap off the three face for the initial startup test let me see if i can bring this into the sun and give you a closer look at what this is like this is a y fitting as you can see right there four inch and this up here is where the three phase unit is sticking out now if you look up under here there is an impeller let's see how well it's going to focus i can't see if you can see or not it's too bright out here joe malovich has been doing some plastic impellers and that's one that we're going to be testing out it's a good size and we hope that it will stand up to enough water to finish up these tests here before lynx alternative power makes a stainless steel version what's the purpose of this test today we're gonna get it started so let's go ahead and plop this in the water and i may put this little section of four inch pipe right here oh no he's got that glued in we'll have to get us a coupling all right so basically the idea is siphon will pull here go up and over and come down here and we'll have to attach this because the down pipe will determine the suction power basically and so currently that may not even start because this is just ever so slightly below that there we go a much better look at that plastic impeller should give us a pretty good test of whether or not this should be uh changed into a stainless steel do check out joe malovich's channel down below he has got how he made this basically and it's pretty cool all right so the plan is to use this four inch coupling here on this piece right there i did bring some screws if we need to lock this into place a bit better and this right here is about a fourth i know a three foot piece of four inch pipe and this was going to go right down here like that and this should give us a really serious test of how powerful this thing can be so i'm going to stick with this right here going into the water and so we may end up with a vortex that brings air into here and we'll have to extend this down some but for now we'll just start off with that this will be making three-phase ac so i'm just gonna put a couple of wire nuts here on the end of these wires to keep anything from happening to us several years ago i was standing on this rock and dropped a gopro into the water that was terrible and then not too long after that i had a gopro right here and it fell off over in here so i've lost a few gopros over the years so far it's looking pretty good this is going to be at a good level to get water into it and this over here seems to be resting well enough it's heavy over here so i can actually lift this really easy i'm hoping there's enough stuff here to keep it in place and maybe when this is full of water it'll be heavy enough along this section to keep it in place so that being said i've got my wires up out of the way i'm going to clear off this debris real quick so that's not resting on that and then we will go ahead and walk down there and i guess put the cap on probably could have done that up here but we'll have to get to it down there anyway okay i've got the cap and the impact driver to tighten it down with and now it's time to walk through snake land no stakes on that round okay so i've got this rubber cap and it just uses a hose clamp to tighten down i'm going to go ahead and attach it to the end of the pipe and i'm probably gonna regret not putting any screws in uh that coupling but uh we'll see what happens so we'll do that real quick i didn't bring the tripod so i just show it when it's done i now have the cap there on the ends so it's time to go start filling it up from the top my prediction is the weight inside of this tube here is going to pull all that out of the fitting and we'll have to put a screw in there it's going to be a whole thing but let's give it a try okay i forgot to bring a bucket but my neighbor had one so i'm going to borrow it so the plan now is to simply attach this 90 here onto the end not too tight now and then just start filling this up with water and hopefully it doesn't bust the other end off or i fall into the pond so now i'm going to try to turn this into the water we've got about three inches of clearance there for that siphon to take place so when i pull this cap over here hopefully this whole thing will start spinning i'm probably about to get wet okay i didn't pull the siphon i hope you can hear me all right i think what's happening is the six foot section across the dam is uh too much volume for this small stand pipe here to uh to support the siphon so i need to do uh one of two things either extend this all the way down or cap the bottom cap the top once it's full turn it in the water and then remove the cap i think that'll work because the siphon will basically have that whole pipe across the dam full of water now it's halfway full and it just doesn't maintain a full siphon all right i cut a small piece here and got a cap and i think we can uh put that on there and maybe it'll prevent this from flowing back but i thought of another idea we can hit it with a rock no i just came so we need more water in this side of the tube than we do this side to get the siphon started so my thoughts were what if we lift up this whole section here yeah yeah hope it works so that there's water up to i don't know whatever point that rock is at and then when we turn that back down hopefully it'll pull all of that siphon instead of uh just up here but we'll have to have this little piece stuck down in there to make sure it has enough into the water don't you worry we're about to get this unit going if you would take a moment to hit the subscribe button and ring the notification bell i have several more videos coming up demonstrating how this four inch unit works it's full to about right there [Music] anyway let's see if it's enough this will be my last time to try starting the syphon just using water if it doesn't work i will bring a shop back down here and pull the siphon with the vacuum alright well no go here's the new plan i have this super old shop vac and i took the filter out so if it does get some water in here i think we'll be okay and then i've made up this little contraption basically it's gonna go four inch coupling down to inch and a quarter this side right here the uh the inlet side fits perfectly in here and makes a pretty tight seal so i also left this t up here so i can basically put a hand above that like this and it will bring the siphon over and then i can drop that pull this out and i think that's enough to get it going and i can just pull this whole coupling off of there and get the full force of that siphon let's go try it out so a week has passed and i had a good conversation with spencer from langston alternative power and he said yes my idea for having the down pipe in the water to start the siphon is a good one but there's an easier way you can actually use a bucket as your pool of water at the bottom so the downspout will go into this and it doesn't necessarily have to be that full eight foot drop off the edge over there so that's the plan for today i have got a couple of fittings i've got some of these to hopefully hold those pipes in place and then i've got uh a 45 to hopefully replace that uh is that a 45 yeah 45. um to replace that 90 so hopefully we'll get better pressure out of that and then i've got this y fitting which will be the new place that the shop vac pulls from and we can turn off the valve and close that so hopefully we'll get this up and running today i know i won't be able to hold up this five gallon bucket and the vacuum at the same time so we're gonna give it a try and then i'll build some kind of sand over here to hold the bucket up for me nope too heavy okay i now have a stand to hold up the bucket you may be tempted to admire my woodworking skills but remember we're here for hydro so here's my little sand i'm gonna get some water in the bucket so that it will cover up this last little bit and then we will pull the vacuum and hopefully get all this started my prediction is gonna pull that right there out so we'll see anyway i'm let this water fill up real quick and we will get this started okay my goal is to attach the vacuum let it suck water over turn that ball valve so it has a suction continuing and a lot of water is going to come out of that bucket all at once so anyway let's see if it's going to work it looks like the siphon has started but it's not really turning anything up top yet so not really sure what's going on that's a lot of water coming out i don't see any air flowing out of that i don't see any kind of vortex over here let's see if i just touch this if it will kick it off a bit hey there we go now we're getting some movement it's speeding up nice so it just needed a little bit of extra push to get that thing going all right spencer langston was correct we had to have the bucket down there to maintain that siphon otherwise it was going to suck air in there and just quit but that seems to be doing the job i am a bit anxious to see how much water that's pulling versus how much water we have it is slowed way down falling over the the waterfall here but as you can see we've got plenty of water to work with for these tests [Applause] as you can see it has pretty much stopped the waterfall coming over the dam but remember whenever that thing goes under load it's going to spin slower and it'll reduce the amount of water that it's pulling so we'll have to do those tests also to see how much water this thing is consuming i'm really excited to say that it did not pull the down pipe off of there that's really cool i think there's going to be two ways of stopping this thing one is just to go up there and turn the 90 out of the water and the other one i'm wondering if i pull this ball valve open if it will shut down let's find out i'm seeing a lot of air being pulled in still going strong well it looks like i've got enough water in this pond here to run this thing for maybe 30 minutes or so all the water is done here on this rock which is pretty serious and if you look on the edge over there it's dropped down about three inches so uh definitely going quick but super exciting to see that's the end of today's video all i wanted to do was get this thing running so that we have a clean install clean for us to do some testing so i've got lots of stuff to do i want to test different size or different length down pipes i want to do a lot of stuff with power as well so we'll be hooking up a rectifier and volt meter and we'll get charge controller and battery and dump load all kinds of stuff out here to see what kind of power this thing can produce i also want to see the flow rates so you can see it's dropping down pretty good now but if we were to put a load on here i think it will slow down a pretty good bit but anyway that's it for today thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe and leave me a comment down below i think this little series is going to be super exciting all right i'll see you in the next video bye i don't want to leave you hanging let's see how we can turn this thing off i think first of all we're gonna grab a tripod all right let's see if we can get this thing stopped that was a fun sound if you've enjoyed watching this four inch hydro unit then i think you'll enjoy watching a six inch version as well so check out this video here for my friend bill he lives in western north carolina and is making 500 watts off of this system alright be sure to watch that video and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Land to House

Views: 172,045

Keywords: land to house, land two house, micro hydro, water power, turbine, 4 inch turbine, langston alternative power, low head micro hydro, low flow micro hydro

Id: 2SyRT6gBYVQ

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021