Over on his YouTube channel [Construction General] shows us how to convert a drain into a hydropower facility. This type of hydroelectric facility is known as a gravitation water vortex power plant. The central structure is a round basin which includes a central drain. The water feeds into the basin through a series of pipes which help to create the vortex which drives the water turbine before flowing out the drain.
To make the facility [Construction General] starts by laying some slabs as the foundation. One of the slabs has a hole to which the central drain pipe is attached. Bricks and mortar are then used to build the basin around the drain. A temporary central pipe is used for scaffolding along with some strings with hooks attached to hold the bricks and mortar in place for the basin. Integrated into the top half of the basin are fifteen inlet pipes which feed in water at an angle.
The next step is to build the dam wall. This is a bricks and mortar affair which includes the drain in the bottom of the wall and two spillways at the top. The spillways are for letting water flow out of the dam if it gets too full. Around the drainage in the dam wall a valve is installed. This valve is called the low-level outlet or the bottom outlet, and in this case it is a sluice, also known as a slide gate, which can be raised or lowered to control the rate of flow through the turbine.
Once the basin is complete and the low-level outlet is in place the scaffolding is removed. The basin is then painted, pink on the inside and white around the top. A turbine is constructed from various metal pieces and installed into the basin. The turbine is attached to a generator which is fixed atop the basin. The apparatus for operating the low-level outlet is installed and the dam is left to fill.
Hydropower is a topic we’ve covered here at Hackaday before, if you’re interested in the topic you might like to check out A Modest But Well-Assembled Home Hydropower Setup, Hydropower From A Washing Mashine, or Bicycle Hub Hydropower.
Now it’s YoutubeShorts-a-day?
FFS, what’s next? TikTok? Most of us here are not brainrotten zombies looking for another clickbaity dopamine shot.
RP2040 and RP2350 projects give me the largest dopamine shots. I wish there was a hacker website where people post ideas that you can bookmark, vote for and realize. Lack of ideas is my biggest filter from growth.
Many recent projects that impressed me deeply were the BLE nRF projects running off 37µF caps powered by a photodiode. But that’s the category “built it just way better”. PCBs using SMD elements and stencils is out of my scope.
I hate being that guy, but creating dams and blocking of natural springs and rivers is probably illegal in the western world, so whilst the “brainrotten” hack is cool, there is no way I can build it either. And to be fair, the summer heat kills my creative drive completely. Winter is the best season to tinker.
The second link in gives the right idea why it might be illegal, but this type (if built as in the wiki article however) can be legitimate: Migration of fish is influenced. My personal feel was build up of algae and other water pests and disease vectors like mosquitos.
Isn’t that pretty much just hackaday.io?
I was thinking more of Project Euler, but for hardware and software. Other people post an idea/a challenge and you solve it because it resonated with your own needs. If you are on 3D printing websites many have a feature where you can share that you printed someone else’s project (maybe even as reiteration) and it’s like a feedback.
I feel the frontpage is more like an inspiration source, the io site is more for WIPs and “I built this”.
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(I second that)^T
Everyone beware of VVS, the Vertical Video Syndrome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2picMQC-9E
I like this video because they showed the construction from start to finish, showed how everything worked and didn’t waste a lot of time but instead just showed how it worked. A lot of video makers could learn a few lessons from how to present things with this video. That said, I’m not a real fan of youtube shorts and wish people would just post them as actual videos instead. I’m also curious of the power generation capabilities of this. This could also be useful in man made waterways instead of damming up streams. Things like irrigation ditches or storm drains.
The overflow is going like crazy. So none ever gave any thought about the amount of water that is available and how to size the turbines.
What I don’t like is the use of plastic pipes, though.
Let’s think of miccro plastic issue here, it doesn’t belong into water.
Especially in third-world countries, plastic is so popular and used for things it’s not meant to be.
they do this all the time. shooting a movie building a hydro-dam and tearing it down to make another. rince repeat. you think its just one guy, but its a whole team. i think the hack-a-day filter should be a little stricter. i mean, whats next? building underground shelters with swimming pools? chinese chick with way too big boobs repairing and building stuff, seemingly all by herself?