Spring is here along with a bunch of things to do. Just refilled the wood shed for next winter. Inoculated a bunch of logs with shiitake mycelium. This is the first time I’ve tried growing mushrooms and I’m hoping for a harvest in about 6 months. And I’m finishing up my hydro installation. I need to make more charcoal before the burning season ends but time is scarce.
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It’s similar for me, it’s not the height, it’s the ladder. I don’t trust any ladder.
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I guess we are, I thought I’d tackle the inevitable rat problem that normally comes with poultry so the coop will now be raised up three feet on ’stilts’ just to mess with the darn rodents.
We used to insulate with bales around the coop and of course we then added a nice cosy home for rodents to overwinter 
so now I’ll take the opportunity to use some used insulation from some commercial roofing that I picked up to have the chickens a bit more comfortable.
Was thinking of making those cones they used to have on ships to stop rats and put them on those 1” threaded rods the coop is now standing on. Not sure if the distance is enough but it is what it is.
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My water turbine is nearing completion. The wheel has been built from the aluminum spoons I cast:
I built a housing for the wheel and installed it on a new concrete pad. I ran the turbine for a while to test it out. Because it was unloaded, it ran twice as fast as it will under load but worked fine. That concludes the mechanical part of the project aside from a shelter over the turbine.
An electric line has been buried to the turbine site and the next step will be to add a battery and inverter.
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The turbine looks great! I wonder if an MPPT circuit would adjust to the pelton wheel and run it at the optimum speed (unloaded/2).
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in old buildings they used big flat stones, so mice cannot climb over…maybee if you add some metal plate 40 x 40 or so under the beams, the rats cannot easy climb over…?
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Thanks Giorgio. That is an easier solution than making cones, I will give that a go.
I like easy. 
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Very interesting JO, looking forward to what you find, and how it will work since you fixed this, but wouldn’t you put this in your volvo thread, so it doesn’t disappear?
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Yes, that’s right, Jan. I’ll continue in my Volvo-thread, as soon as I make any progress.
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You know Kent, I was wondering about that too. I designed the pulley diameters to make the alternator spin at the correct rpm at full load. Off load is where issues arise. Unlike a solar panel where you can just disconnect it from batteries or load, the turbine needs to send the energy in the water somewhere or it will spin faster. I think I will need a dump load and a controller that switches that in when the batteries are fully charged and there is no call for power. On the other side of full load, if there is a call for more power than the turbine can supply, a MPPT may help by keeping the turbine near ideal speed. I’m just not knowledgeable enough in electrical engineering to know if that would be the case.
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Maybe a water flow return line back up to your head beginning??
Get some usage from your load dumping.
Jet well pumps work like this. Taking some flow/pressure out of a made power/flow circuit.
Hydraulic fluid power pumped systems like vehicle power steering functioning the same.
S.U.
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Thought for a while about having a wind spinner that gives power to an electric cartridge in an accumulator tank, and that I add an element with a small fan and take the heat out.
This to the summer house to help the air heat pump, would it work?
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When I was an ME student at Umass Amherst 44 years ago (yikes!), they had a small demo house with a wind turbine driving a paddle wheel in a water tank. It was a direct couple from a truck axle so all the energy went into the paddle and was dissipated as heat in the water. An electrical system would work too but with an energy conversion penalty to electricity.
The turbine had a 32.5 foot (9.9m) diameter. It was powerful enough that the axle was burnt out after a while. Any meaningful amount of heat will require a substantial turbine. For example, most small turbines on the market only put out a few hundred watts, and that is at design wind speed that rarely occurs 24/7. Compare that to the thousands required for space heating.
If you have access to solar, a cheaper more effective solution might be a warm air collector situated under a window that vents through the partially open window. These were common in the '70s, not so much anymore.
https://www.umass.edu/windenergy/about/history/windturbinewf1
Edit: The link is to the wind turbine at Umass in its original configuration where it did generate electricity to heat water as you want to do. Later on it went to a mechanical generation possibly to eliminate the conversion penalty.
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I need heat in the cabin so it doesn’t freeze (water in the toilet, etc.) and it’s quite windy out there between 2 lakes, it’s not sunny in the winter. Found this on Amazon.
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Jan,
i would recommend to stay away from vertical axis wind turbines in general , as they are almost useless in terms of producing power.
and especially if they declare 12 kilowatt output from .5 square meter of swept area - that is crazy.
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Indeed! Most of the comments for that product are 1 star negative calling out the performance. Would probably be zero stars if allowed.
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There is a Vawt (savonius) you can make from 55 gallon drums. They max out at like 10% efficiency vs 33 for turbines, but they work better in low wind conditions.
If you can dig a deep trench/tunnel out and use geothermal air inlet would be the easiest. I think we talked about this and you had rocks.
The next easiest/cheapest is probably solar thermal… IF your house is getting too hot in the summer. the old school trick is to whitewash, as it reflects the light away. It can lower the temperature by 10-15 degrees and but it washes off with rain. It also could be you have inadequate roof venting. My attic got really hot until they put vents in. In our southern states, they are testing an air gap layer like a solar panel with an air gap (kind of like solar thermal) where the heat doesn’t actually hit the roof.
As always getting double pane glass with glazing and fixing all the air leaks especially on the sill. helps a lot. If there isn’t a basement then you want to make the crawlspace under it as airtight as possible. But I think you did this already.
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Hugh Piggott wing turbine recipe book of you want a diy.
I built a 10 ft swept area one and I believe he was honest with his statement on power output. My limited testing came close to what he said it would.
That should be Wind not wing. Scoraig wind uk
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