Microhydro planning, 1200 ft transmission cable

[BruceM]

Sounds like great progress considering your work schedule, Marcus.  I hope the remainder of the pipe laying goes smoothly, with less poison oak.  On the bright side, you probably don't have to watch your step for Cholla (cactus), rattlesnakes, and scorpions.   

[deeiche]

What VOIP company are you using?

Hope y'all don't mind an off topic reply to an off topic question.

You weren't asking me but I thought I'd chime in anyway.

I have used Vitelity Communications for years, $1.49/month for telephone number and $0.012/minute.  It is a bring your own hardware service.
I also have a VoIP iNum number with VoIP.ms, but I never use it.  Their rates are $1.49/month for telephone number and $0.0105/minute.  It is a bring your own hardware service.

[sailawayrb]

Bruce, we don't have cactus or scorpions (I don't think...), but we sure do have rattlesnakes, mountain lion and bear.  In fact, I had a 10 minute Mexican stare down with a rattlesnake last summer in the crawl space under my shed while plumbing my irrigation system.  It was about 120 deg F in the sun so the snake wasn't very motivated to move out from the shade.  He was only about 3 feet away from my face when he started rattling and I noticed him.  I was in a pretty tight and confined spot and decided it would be best not to move at all.  Eventually the snake settled down and slowly left the scene.  Nevertheless, poison oak is still the worst fate of all!

Bob B.

[BruceM]

That's a scary rattlesnake story. Nothing's worse that a surprise in a crawlspace.  Glad you lived to tell the tale, Bob B.

I had a visitor in my shop last summer, I damn near stepped on him.  Lucky for me it was just after dawn and he was not up to speed yet.  I got past him before he could strike.

I had no idea rattlers were up there in western Oregon.  They must have a huge range.

[mbryner]

Great story, Bob!   Everyone needs a good rattlesnake story.   I have several stories, including killing 5 rattlers near our new house over the past several years.   Yes, plenty of rattlers in Oregon.   Yes, we also have scorpions here, but I can remember seeing only one.

http://scorpionforum.darkbb.com/t39-uroctonus-mordax-nortwest-forest-scorpion
http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?14511-Oregon-Scorpions

I use Broadvoice for VOIP.   We haven't had regular telephone in years.   Broadvoice included 20 countries in it's $25/month and they sent hardware.   We call Europe (specifically Switzerland) so that was important for me.

Getting poison oak is a yearly occurrence for me.  Nothing new! 

[sailawayrb]

Glad you enjoyed my snake story.  Wow, didn't know we had scorpions!  We have poisonous spiders too:

http://oregon.gov/ODA/PLANT/IPPM/spiders.shtml

Broadvoice sounds like a great choice for international calling.  We have been very happy with Ooma for national calling...no $/minute charge at all.  We also like the caller ID, voice mail, and call forwarding capability that is also free.

Bob B.

[squarebob]

I use an OBI 110 and google voice. 49.00 for the box. USA is free calls.

http://obihai.com/

[vdubnut62]

Wow! I didn't realize the range of the 'rattler. We have black (or very dark) ones here and Copperheads.  For spiders we get Black Widows and the Brown Recluse. The scorpions here are about an inch to an inch and a half and light brown. Not to mention the Red wasp, Black wasp,
Yellowjackets (mean little boogers) Baldfaced hornets and Japanese hornets!
Fellow has to keep a good look out.
Ron.

[Tom Reed]

When I was building the house, working under the deck is about a 3' crawl space. I'm sitting there working on some plumbing and move a piece of tar paper from the siding and there is a cute little rattle snake right there striking distance from me. Fortunately it was morning and cold so it died.

[mbryner]

it was morning and cold so it died.

I love how you wrote that.   

[Jedon]

I feel like we are long lost brothers Marcus, we have done so many of the same things! My hydro is working pretty good right now, 3.8A at 49V. Spring project is to run another 400ft or so of 3" PVC through the steep canyon, luckily we are too high elevation wise to have much poison oak. You tend to do things more "right" than I do though! I'm wondering if I can make my own coanda screen, my screen intake is always clogging up and $300 is steep for a piece of sheet metal with some holes in it.
-Jedon
Harris Hydro Pelton Wheel, Metro CS 6/1, Lister SR2, Onan 10K etc

[mbryner]

@Jedon:  More like $500.  And I thought that was a lot of money, too, for a Coanda screen until it came in the mail a week ago.   It was a bit different than I expected.   Much thicker and welded.   The screen itself is not sheet metal at all, but the sides are.   Still much heavier than I thought it would be.   I have 2 sisters but no brothers, so maybe you are my long lost brother!

So here's an update:  I am so happy w/ this project, so far.   I dug a small pond/puddle at the diversion and installed the screen last week.   The pipe has a couple high spots where the terrain was difficult.   It took a while to flush out all the air, but when all is said and done --  80+ PSI  static head!!!   Running at 10-15 gpm the net head doesn't change from 80 psi.   That's 190 ft vertical. (Google Earth said 215 ft.- just shows it is only relatively accurate.)   Today, I modified the wiring to the well and internet as per the diagrams I posted earlier in this thread.   I cannibalized the neutral and ground wires going up from the house since the well casing had a good ground on it.  (That ground was bonded to the house ground before.)   The well pump didn't have a neutral; just 2 hots and ground.   For other small loads, like internet and relays I just used 240 V from the 2 hots or used a isolation transformer.   Works great just like theory said it should!   Funny, when I looked closely at the IT equipment, it's built for 120/240, so all I had to do for that portion was change the neutral wire to Hot2 and disconnect neutral and ground, then turn the breaker back on.   I labeled all receptacles that are not standard voltage, so no one plugs anything else in.   The turbine will hopefully be installed Wednesday.   Fingers crossed for 300+ watts...

Marcus  

Here are some pictures of the diversion and screen:

[BruceM]

That's an awesome amount of pressure at 10-15 gpm.  Congrats, Marcus. The inaccuracy of inexpensive pressure gauges might account for some of your head discrepancy. 

Securing your pipe run through the woods with that much vertical must have been something! I hope you'll meet your 300 W goal!

Best Wishes,
Bruce M