Sharkey's blog

Looks like my predictions about the longevity of this project were based on sound reasoning. I had to take the hydro plant off line a day or two ago due to wear and breakage in the Pelton assembly. The plant had been getting noisy very fast, making kind of a rattling/clattering racket when it was running. It was still making full power, but it sounded like a hollow gourd filled with beans being rolled around.

Got this in the email today:

It's from Michael O., whose logging truck home was featured in Rolling Homes (and is the focus of my review of that book), as well as the This Old House feature on Housetrucks.

Michael (and his truck) are living in New Mexico, and it looks like they might get some snow there now and then.

I've been thinking about how to better mount and support the generator I have now. If I add nozzles to it, I need more and better attachments, and it would be nice to have something more stable than an old cinder block as a foundation. A better enclosure would make the operation quieter as well, not that I have a big objection to the white noise of water. A square bucket or aluminum enclosure of some sort with the generator mounted on top of the lid would allow the machine to be opened up for inspection and make exchanging nozzles a lot easier.

Just came out the warm end of a full week of freezing temperatures. Today was the first that the temperature was above freezing for 24 hours.

The neighbors lost their water last Monday. Apparently, running my little electric plant and keeping the water flowing at full volume kept me from having freeze issues. Every year until this one, I had some kind of a failure in cold weather, in spite of running the water at the taps in the house. Nothing like wide-open delivery to keep things liquid.

I was just idling away some time this evening, following referrals from the access logs when I clicked in on a page describing a new construction of a Housetruck. It took me a moment to connect what I was seeing with what I had already posted, but now it makes sense.

I guess it's time to be surprised, as the tiny $7.50 hydro plant is still cranking out power. Most days I have to shut it down by mid morning as the batteries are fully charged from the previous night's consumption.

Yesterday I was digging around on my backup computer looking for something when I came across these photos that I had squirreled away. I have no idea where they came from, so if anyone reading this recognizes them as theirs, speak up and I'll offer attribute...

As expected, there is a lot of high-end theory involved with the design of Pelton Wheel hydro installations, and mine is only haphazardly poking at the arithmetic.

Had a look at the Wikipedia page on Pelton Wheels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel

The days are getting shorter and darker and I find myself having to use the AC-to-DC converter in the Housetruck to keep the batteries from getting too low each night due to the current draw of the incandescent lights. This really isn't a lot of power, but it irks me to have to purchase utility power when there is so much renewable energy flowing all around me.

To wit: I dug out a project from 12 -15 years ago (maybe longer) and completed it (finally):

Got a message from John Labovitz, who is building a new housetruck. Since this is actually a somewhat unusual event, I thought I'd share his message here: