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earthenstead said
Welcome to the forum. Not sure what kind of criticism you were anticipating, constructive or otherwise. It appears to work as intended. Thats a really beautiful place you've got there. I'd love some photos/video of the house and stream in daylight. How big is the stream? How big is your property? Looks like you have some acreage. Most of RI appears rather densely packed, where in the state are you that you are able to have such open space?

Thanks, Earthenstead.....

Constructive is always best.  There may be a way to improve the output, but with just 4 feet of "head" and a limited amount of flow I don't think I'll get much more out of it. The water wheel and generator are  actually working way better than I ever dreamed it would. My hopes were to simply light up a light bulb on the shore. If I had just done this 30 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation. In the early years, power seemed to go out every other week....

It's funny that you ask about the property. My wife and I will be putting it "on the market" this spring after 35 years of country living. It consists of 28 acres of mixed hardwoods, an acre or so field, and the pond area you see in the video. We literally built it ourselves with stone off the property and native rough-sawn lumber. The pond (which was excavated with DEM's blessing about 25 years ago) has a small year round stream running along next to it. During the driest years the flow has gone as low as 20-30 GPM but it's never completely stopped flowing. By setting up a siphon pipe I can keep the pond full without the silt problems incurred when a stream runs into a stream directly. We've successfully stocked it with trout in years past, but lately the bass and bluegills have taken it over.

Foster is literally on the Connecticut line. There's still a lot of woodland out here and with a 4.5 acre minimum building lot the hopes are that it will stay rural. It was/is a great place to raise kids and I will miss it....

Steve

PS My wife and I will be moving into Connecticut with my daughter, son-in-law and three beautiful grand-kids. And the new property has a much bigger stream with a lot more drop. I'm excited about the possibilities!

DangerDuke said
I'm curious to find out how much flow in terms of GPM you have going through that creek. Do you think you could produce more power if you bottle necked the creek through a small section of culvert maybe?

 

I know very little about hydroelectric power so there are legit questions

Tried that, but not enough "head" to do anything with hydro. That's why I moved the whole thing over the bank at the end of the pond. There's about a four foot difference between the water level and the outlet at the base of the box. The three pipes are actually siphoning the water over the bank - which is why they actually have some pressure.

Thanks for looking, DD, and those are legit questions.