We have to admit that we often think about building unusual things, but we hadn’t really considered building our own hydroelectric dam before. [Mini Construction] did, apparently, and there’s a timelapse of the build in the video below.
We wished this was more of a how-to video, although if you are handy with brickwork, the mechanical construction seems straightforward. Presumably, you’d need to understand how much force the water had but we don’t know if there was math involved or just seat-of-the-pants design.
We were unclear what the tower was for until we saw the turbine installed in it. We weren’t clear where it came from, and it looked like maybe it was repurposed from something else. If you recognize what it is, or have a guess, drop a comment, will you? While the brickwork was impressive, the wiring — especially near water — looked a bit suspect. We hope that was just test wiring and a more permanent arrangement was made later.
We have seen hacker hydroelectric before, but rarely. Waterwheels seem much more common. Honestly, the masonry work was the best we’ve seen since [Walt] built a bomb shelter.
Yeah, I would like to know more about the turbine and generator.
Yeah, I would like to know more about how many people he flooded out up stream.
doubt he flooded anyone out up stream. Theres no reason to assume he created anything greater than a pond on his own property.
3 foot of head on the dam.
This must just be a diversion dam.
Powerhouse downhill.
Not going to watch the vid.
If you watch the vid, the money they spent getting it on HackaDay will have ROI.
The soil on either side is going to wash out.
He just plunked a dam into an eroded ditch.
Genius! Who knew Civil engineering was so easy?
Thats what I was concerned about, shortly after the dam is active you can already see erosion, it’s not going to last.
13:15 erosion on the left yes…. nothing to keep debris out of the turbine as well. There is a suspicious cut as well at 5:35. my guess is that the incline is a piece of wood covered by the plaster (in another earlier video he seems to have filled it with stones). the way the gates are shown going in they are not going to be driven in by the motors again (the motors also don’t seem to be mounted properly for pushing). everything seems to be awfully exposed to the elements as well but that is probably the least issue. If the overflows are blocks the generator will get flooded
There’s a whole genre of East-Asian fake construction videos where usually one or two guys work on a “DIY” project that seems a little bit too ambitious for the tools and materials they have at hand – because they’re never meant to work in the first place.
They crank them out on a conveyor belt.
I bet it lasted less than 48 hours. Once water starts moving around the sides, it ends quickly. But it is just for fun and making a video, like a model rocket. The cluster of light bulbs is hard to believe if they are incandescent.
Based on how many videos he has, he builds a lot of them. Probably brings power and water to a farmhouse for each. I love it!
In any case, a follow-up about the changes in the territory would be interesting
“Honestly, the masonry work was the best we’ve seen since….” Just be quiet.
Headline should read “Clickbait youtube channel fools HAD ‘journalist'”.
TLDR: Looking for a link to this build log / hacker’s documentation of their water power station I can’t find anymore.
This topic made me remember a website from – I dunno – ~15 years ago, probably featured on HaD where a hacker documented his work on building a small hydroelectric turbine and getting the water from a small stream on his property.
It was pretty much if not completely off-grid and I vaguely remember a bunch of other details:
– yellow electric motors used as generators from china with wrong wiring in the connection box.
– the turbine was installed in a shed quite a bit away from the house so the transmission was important too. Maybe including up/down transformation?
– the water was piped there quite a distance too. Including digging a trench through some wood(?).
– it may have included a strong bit of inverter hacking (making them work properly and up to their snuff, basically reworking quite a bit of the design – almost just re-using the parts & case). But this may have been a different story.
– the property was ~half way up a large mountain or something.
– they were building the house pretty much by themselves too (living in a trailer during the first years?)
But for the life of me I can’t find it anymore, not in my bookmarks, not in any mails I send and of course not via DuckDuckGo. :-(
I’m guessing you found this one: http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html
It’s s much better resource then the article. I found it a few years ago on the build it solar website. https://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Hydro/hydro.htm
Yes, thats exactly it – thank you.
And is the same page with the http://ludens.cl/Electron/chinverter/chinverter.html
:-)
@HaD: If this wasn’t on HaD before it sure should be…
Just checked again – I did send an email ~8 years ago with pretty much a bare-metals-link to to site and no context at all (expect for a miss spelled “off-the-grid”…). Doh!
The waybackmachine’s earliest copy is from 2008 so even my “~15 years” estimate was close enough.
But I probably did see it on HaD in 2016: https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=ludens.cl
@HaD: you really need to get your tags in order.
Maybe add some kind of auto complete functionality so that when one writer types down “hydroelectric” they are strongly encouraged to put “hydropower” in there too – especially when already linked to articles on the same topic use that tag already…
There are a $hit-ton of these types of vids on YT.
All seem to be simple based on YT ROI.
Worst one is a series by a girl in China who does apparently have some engineering degree, and does a lot of motor/generator re-winding, and very, very dangerous ticky-tacky arc spot welding. Worst was a 50-75kg motor suspended overhead of a triangular frame where workers were working underneath.
Vibrated like crazy, and pretty sure those welds failed within hours of start-up.
From the success in views, and total lack of any comments by people actually doing the work, it seems likely most of these are simply people being paid by someone else to do these jobs to support the YT income.
I would love to see more hydroelectric builds. I’ve got the perfect area to do this but I’m indecisive on the best path to take.
800-1000 gallons a minute but to get a head of more than 15 feet would be extremely difficult.
I did the math for a 12 to 15 foot diameter wheel and with the proper design it would work well but fabrication and placement would be a big pain.
The torque at that size is huge.
Notice that the video is mirrored, that means this footage is stolen from another video. It seems the scammers have figured out you can bypass content-id by mirroring the video. I stopped watching when I noticed this, this guy is getting ad revenue off the back of someone else.
Funny, I used to watch pirated movies on youtube. This was one method along with speeding up/pitching up the audio so it sounded nightcore tier.
It can also be the same fake video mongers using the same video twice to collect even more clicks.
Ugh – Is the end of this blog? Bye ‘HAD’ it’s been great.