Posted: 01:23pm 13 Oct 2005

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Whilst walking the dog today I came across a house with some water pumping mills for sale out the front, one was probably 8ft tall with a rotor around 1.5m and a few other smaller ones, all very detailed reproductions of the big farm type mills like loyds, being the inquisitive type I enquired into who made them and generally chatted with the owner explaining to him that I was also very interested in wind power engineering. I was invited into his workshop where he was ballancing his latest rotor (he had already constructed the 4 leg tower complete with a mini ladder etc..) while I told him about your site I also noticed a new system he was beginning to use that saved him alot of time making bearing assemblies from scratch, he uses a water pump from a holden rodeo, I asked him if it had bearings at the front and the back to support the gyro loads, it did although I don't know what it could handle.

He didn't mind if I took a pic so what do you think?.....

Posted: 01:59am 14 Oct 2005

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I think thats a good idea. The bearings should be able to handle a fair bit, I wouldn't hang a big 2 meter blade off it, but for a 1 meter blade I think it would work fine. A car water pump has to handle a lot of side force from the drive belt, and ever changing engine speeds, so they must be pretty durable.

I like it.

Glenn