"One-time" nuts - Should I care?

[ChrisGreaves]

Do you have a jet-stream over Newfoundland?

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Bonavista: "Where the jet streams meet"

Bonavista is where the trans-Atlantic flights tempt me.
But I will not be tempted for another trip to the Ilê de France. It goes against the grain to spend time
(1) Traveling to St John's by car
(2) Waiting for a flight
(3) Flying to Toronto
(4) Waiting for a flight to CDG
just to fly right over my home here some ten hours later.
Not to mention the $$$.
Not to mention the entire procedure in reverse.
Except for the $$$; they always flow out.

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Tuesday, October 10, 2017 "I am struck by the thought that it would be faster to drive to St John’s and then catch a flight to Vancouver or London to grab a coffee, and I could be back here before this café opened."

I live in a time-warp.

Cheers
Chris

[BobH]

Chris, we have a weather station with anemometer for wind speed. Instructions say to mount it 30 feet above ground level for a true reading. They explain - as has been mentioned - that friction with the ground lowers wind speed therefore a true reading is not obtain at lower levels.

Perhaps this is why people 'always' say you have to mount it on the house.

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris, we have a weather station with anemometer for wind speed. Instructions say to mount it 30 feet above ground level for a true reading. They explain - as has been mentioned - that friction with the ground lowers wind speed therefore a true reading is not obtain at lower levels.

Hi Bob. I have read the '30 feet" guideline. FWIW Ventusky starts its wind reporting at 10m=30' and then goes up from there.

I will end up mounting the turbines on my shed roof. (yesterday an inspection showed that I have a vent in the roof I didn't know about; "handy!", I said to myself). The battery-bank will be racked in the shed, and a 12vDC supply cable will come to a service panel which will probably be mounted in the kitchen. I have a 1cm access hole, used to bring the oil/kerosene pipe into the house.

I run into discussion with this, because (a) I am learning as i go and (b) i want to document different configurations.
Yesterdays "standing on the ground" test was to see if there was enough wind to orient the turbine by its wind-vane. The answer was "no", because I have guy-ropes that blocked the blades movements My programming background suggests testing each component separately, and I reasoned that if the thing can't orient itself into the wind, then it certainly won't be effective.

So, back to the workbench this morning. (Once I have spread the eight front-end-loader buckets of soil&rubble that arrived after supper last night)

I am using a temporary mount, wooden base, and a 20" piece of plastic drain pipe, with a regular North American 3-pin plug so that my 100'extension connects the turbine to the converter. Now I can site the turbine anywhere at all on my property and keep the cabling distance constant. Thus I can measure the effectiveness of power generation from different locations. Front yard, driveway, backyard, on the roof, even in my neighbor's yard. I can choose to take the entire kit to Tom's house on the other side of the hill, or to Tony's place out on Red Point Road. They are so close to the ocean that their trees get painted with salt-spray!

Now, none of these ground-level sites will be as effective as a shed-mounted tower, but I want to get a rough idea of "how much more effective". This is a demonstration system, not a "get off the grid solution". I want to be able to tell people something like "You can boil four mugs of beverage from a ground-based installation; you can take this with you in a camper-van; no installation required" as an example.
Cheers
Chris

[Leif]

Or, as in my case, a desire to experiment with location. I figure that when I move the turbine from a ground-based station to the house roof, and then to the shed roof, I'd very much like to lower the 3-blade hub very carefully before tackling to 20Kg turbine-plus-tower-base.

If you are intending to carry out tests in temporary locations, why not just invest in a (cheaper?) set of spring washers and standard full nuts? Once you have determined the final location, then fit the Nyloc nuts. By definition, the Nyloc nuts should be difficult to remove, and if they get to the point of not being difficult to remove, you are heading towards dangerous territory.

I would guess the short-term 'security' of non-Nyloc nuts and washers cannot be any worse than a pre-used Nyloc nut.

[ChrisGreaves]

If you are intending to carry out tests in temporary locations, why not just invest in a (cheaper?) set of spring washers and standard full nuts?...By definition, the Nyloc nuts should be difficult to remove, ...

Leif, your comments are spot on.
I am at the Serious Re-Think Stage right now. I want to measure different configurations, but the turbine kit is designed as an install-and-run kit. That is, it is neither designed nor sold for amateur engineers to use as a transportable data-collection device.
I am, I now see, using it for a purpose other-than-intended.

Yesterday I did have a little bit of trouble unscrewing the boss nut, loosely applied while I tested the effectiveness of the orienting vane. The boss nut is recessed within the hub, so a replacement threaded shaft is beyond my capabilities. The six bolts&nuts for the vanes could be replaced, but not the boss nut; which means that once the hub+vanes is mounted, it will pretty well stay mounted for ever.

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As well, my four-plate base collar made of five-inch square sections of old planking cracked - should have used new plywood,

I have 30 applications/appliances lined up, and should probably focus on getting stuck into those rather than conduct an amateur study of the technical capabilities of the PekaSola engineers. After all, they can't be worse designers than Microsoft, can they?
And the truth is I have no real need to prove yet again that wind energy available two feet off the ground in a sheltered back yard is much less than that two feet above my shed roof!
(signed) "Gradually Gaining Sanity" of Bonavista
[Later that day]Keith down at Swyers did a top-of-the-head quote for me: $200 plus taxes for a 12' length of pipe, base collar, mid-pole bracelet, and a new roof vent. The base plate will sit on a strong plywood platform across my shed rafters; the mid-pole bracelet will be bolted to a vertical wooden staff that runs between the rafters and the roof beams. I will have six feet of pipe showing above the roof. That will work.
$200 plus taxes; come pension day ... (a week Monday ...)
Cheers
Chris