Farming after Doomsday

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Farming on a Local Basis
After Doomsday

This is our own home little backdoor greenhouse. At one time, almost every home was a little farm. Everyone had a garden and a few chickens. It is a life-style now unknown to present city dwellers but still present to some degree with our village neighbors. It is a life-style to which many will probably return and the purpose of these pages is to help that transition.

Table of Contents: Library: Gathering Resources for After Doomsday. This web page deals with the technical aspects of farming such as seed saving, fertilizers, crop management and so forth. Other web pages in the hierarchy above this one deal with measuring radiation in food, alternate energy sources, and other subjects necessary to successful farming. Farm 1: Protection of Food and Agriculture From Nuclear Attack This 42 page booklet was the comprehensive attempt of the US Department of Agriculture to prepare the farmer for a nuclear attack. It contains much important information. Farm 2: Fallout on the Farm   This 14 page booklet is from the Canadian Government and has useful information about crop alternatives after a nuclear war, the handling of animals exposed to fallout, and many other items of information. Farm3:  UV on the Farm Because farmers have to spend a long time in their fields and I am particularly concerned about the effects of UV (Ultra Violet - intense sunlight) after earth changes or changes in the upper atmosphere - I have done extensive study on this subject. Farm4: Measuring UV                  This is an extension of the above subject and discusses UV measurement equipment and how to make it. More: The Have More Plan                  The "Have-More" Plan (A Little Land - A Lot of Lving) by Ed and Carolyn Robinson is a 1940 classic devoted to the creation of a small farm. It is a bit dated in its view of DDT but generally may be exceptionally useful to those who are inexperienced and are trying to to start. Seeds: Basic Seed Saving                 (In .pdf format.) 6 pages in .pdf format from Seeds of Diversity. Jean and I went down and took their course. Humanure: Humanure Handbook This 200 page book - winnner of many awards is placed here through the kind permission the author Joseph Jenkins. It can be obtained in print at Jenkins Publishing, PO Box 607, Grove City, PA 16127. To order, phone: 1-800-639-4099. http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/ . Humanure: The Handbook available in .pdf format.                 (In .pdf format. ) Mulch: Explains organic composting.                 (In .pdf format. ) This 30 year old 101 page book gives information about mulching. >                 (In .pdf format. ) Fences: Fence Planner for the Common Sense Fence                 (In .pdf format.) This 12 page booklet gives information about wire fences, barbed, stranded, and electric. There are other kinds. Goat1: Dairy Goats       Goat2: Goats and Milk       Goat3: Raising Goats for Meat and Milk       This all ties into the food processing and preservation section where there is still more information. Goats are probably a lot easier to get started and maintain than cows, but milk is necessary from some source for many infants who won't survive otherwise. Chicken1: Chicken One      Chicken2: Chicken Two      Chicken3: Guide to raising healthy chickens                  Chickens (or other poultry) are necessary for eggs and useful for food. Again, see the food processing and preservation section. Egg1: Inside the Egg       Egg2: HOMEMADE INCUBATOR                  Eggs are necessary for chickens. Here is how to build an incubator. You can see that chicken comes first on this web site - so now you know which comes first - and I really don't think that you would get an egg without a chicken. Rabbit1: Rabbit One       Rabbit2: Rabbit Two       Rabbit3: Raising Worms with Rabbits                  Rabbits are always considered an easy source to breed for meat. Easier than pigs or cattle. Being a vegetarian - this is not a big theme with me. My pet rabbit 'ran away' when I was a child. The chickens in the backyard did fare any better. Worm1: Secret of Life       Worm2: Make Your Own Worm Farm.pdf nbsp;      Worm3: A Guide To Worm Composting                  The above about rabbits and worms made me realize that I hadn't put in a worm section, and Jean wouldn't be happy about that - so here is what she calls The Secret of Life. You will also need her paper on worms. Bees: Bee Keeping                 (In .pdf format.) And having not put in the worms made me realize I hadn't put in the bees. We have 22 hives and if you don't have bees - you aren't going to have pollenization for many plants. I have also left out a dog section. We volunteer to raise puppies for children with autism. Farming is fun. Anyway - the way we do it. The books below this level are copyrighted and will be made available by Ark Two (if we still exist and there is enough Internet to disseminate them) after Doomsday - when surely no one will object. The information here will indicate the types of information that you might be interested in gathering into your own library ahead of time. Ark: Build Your Ark                 (In .pdf format. ) "Build Your Ark" (How to Prepare for Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times) by Geri Welzel Guidetti. Published by: The Ark Institute, P.O. Box 364, Monkton, MD 21111,email arkinst@concentric.net : This 248 page Book One on Food Self-Sufficiency covers basic concepts on gardening and goes into detail on soil improvement and insect control. Details are provided on a wide variety of garden vegetables. Farmstead: The Farmstead Book                 (In .pdf format.) "The Farmstead Book 1" edited by Paul Harmond and is Published in the US by: Cloudburst Press of America, Inc. 2116 Wetern Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98121 and in Canada by: Cloudburst Pres Ltd., Mayne Island British Columbia V0N 2J0 - This 262 page Book covers soil and woods management on a more macro level than the book above and also covers the farm machine shop. Taste: Like They Used To Taste                 (In .pdf format.) "Grow Friuts & Vegetables The Way They Used To Taste" by John F. Adams published by Wynwood Press - New York, New York. This 104 page book deals somewhat with vegetables and seed saving but is more largely devoted to fruit trees. Seeds: Saving Seeds                 (In .pdf format.) "Saving Seeds" (The Gardener's Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds) by Marc Rogers and published by Storey Communications, Inc. Pownal, Vermont 05261. 97 pages. Click here to return to Recovery in Your Community After Doomsday Overview Gathering information Resources for Farming After Doomsday This web page deals with the technical aspects of farming such as seed saving, fertilizers, crop management and so forth. Other web pages, in the previous table of contents in the hierarchy above this one, deal with measuring radiation in food, alternate energy sources, and other subjects necessary to successful farming. Still other web pages deal with principles of machinery and old Pioneering skills. We may have to start up farming without access to all the present modern technology. We cannot just go back to the old ways. We have lost many of the skills. No one had them all then and you would be hard put today to find a wheelwright, a miller, a tanner, a barrel maker. All those trades, like farming have advanced into modern technology and the present experts seldom have used the old ways. Many of the old implements are no longer around and we certainly don't have the horses. Modern horses are neither bred nor conditioned to pull the plow. Still, in the skills of the past we may find solutions to the problems of the moment. It is important that you identify resources in your own area and store information that is applicable to the resources that you may have afterwards. Click here to return to the Table of Contents

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Recovery in your Community after Doomsday

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In the navigation bar above there are links to the following root pages

U.S. Map to take you to your state's SAFE resources	Reconstruction which is about the post-holocaust social reorganization of your community	You are at Recovery - the technical processes that will be needed for post-holocaust recovery by your community
Renewal - spiritual renewal will be necessary for your community	Survival has pre-holocaust 'prepper' information	Ark Two - is a description of the founder community of this site

This is the root page of:

Recovery in Your Community after Doomsday Recovery from Doomsday seems hopeless to many people and they think society will be driven back to the dark ages to remain there for centuries, at least. You will notice from the navigation bar at the top of this page that there are other sections dealing with such subjects as 'Reconstruction' and 'Renewal' but this section deals soley with 'Recovery in Your Community'. This section I sub-divide into the following subjects: 1. Starting Agriculture Locally (Without fossil fuel or fetilizer, and probably without horses) 2. Making Bread and Storing and Preserving Food (Without modern packaging such as freezing and tin cans) 3. Dealing with Radiation in Food (How to measure it and remove it) 4. Creating Alternate Energy (Details for many methods including running an engine on wood ) 5. Keeping Machinery Functioning (Hundreds of pages on basic principles and simple machinery) 6. Using Old Pioneer Methods (Old technologies that may have to be reimplemented initially) 7. Medicine (Re-establishment of medicine is going to be a very big objective- and this link like some of those above, leads to many sublinks.) 8. Transportation (Re-establishment of transportation is also going to be very important - and here are a few ideas that may generally be overlooked.) While you will find in the above links - hundreds of pages of information, it is in fact a very small percentage of the that stored at Ark Two, and which we hope to be able to make available through the SAFE network - afterwards. Our personal library is very extensive. At one time I counted 13 sets of encyclopedias. These are mostly specialized - like a 14 volume set on gardening and another 16 volume set on do-it-yourself repairs. There are others on health and medicine and a variety of other subjects. We have also acquired CDs with hundreds of books and one summer put a crew to work microfilming thousands of documents which we have on microfiche. These, plus many many books, are in just our own home but our two Ark Two Community librarians are the real gatherers of information - one has many thousands of books, mostly on technology for recovery, and the other over a terrabyte of information stored on CDs. In the future, when people want it, we hope to be able to disseminate widely whatever is needed from this information. There are many blind spots in our library. We have little information on modern technology and almost no information on leading edge technology. Members of our Ark Two community are of far more than average knowledge about nuclear and computers but there are many, many fields such as in modern metallurgy, petroleum refining, hundreds of specialties in chemistry, medicine, and untold numbers of other areas that the expertise to re-establish them will have to survive with the experts - if they are going to be recovered in the immediate decades following. One major focus of our library has been maps, in order to determine where that expertise may reside. We have thousands of maps. Local road maps. Topographical maps. More and more maps on an expanding scale. We have every map ever published by the National Geographic. We have CDs with map search programs. North American and World Atlases. The list goes on. One map set which we were very desirous of obtaining cost thousands of dollars (far beyond our budget) from the US government. It comes with a subscription program for real-time updating and the printed book is reprinted annually. A marvelous tool for demographers tracking changing patterns - but one used copy would serve our purposes. Miraculously, on the Internet we found a library discard copy - at a fraction of the cost. A great many of our resources deal with old Pioneering skills. We cannot just go back to the old ways. We have lost many of the skills. No one had them all then and you would be hard put today to find a wheelwright, a miller, a tanner, a barrel maker. All those trades, like farming, have advanced into modern technology and the present experts seldom have used the old ways. Many of the old implements are no longer around and we certainly don't have the horses. Modern horses are neither bred nor conditioned to pull the plow. Still, in the skills of the past we may find solutions to the problems of the moment. The problem of the moment has not been getting information, but one of determining which information is going to be most useful to survivors. What we offer in these pages, measuring radiation contamination in food, producing food without the modern technology and its skills, finding alternate sources of energy, recovering and repairing remaining machinery, and in the reconstruction section on how to create the nucleus of an economic and monetary system and restore the basis of functioning society - is what we feel will be most needed at the outset. It is our sincerest hope that we will be able to get it to the people who need it and that they will find it useful. Our primary task of the moment is to create the SAFE Community Network so that the information will be widely disseminated and distributed ahead of time. In this task we very much ask you for your help by: your becoming a Community SAFE TEAM Leader

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Pioneer Methods

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Pioneer Methods The "Good Old Days" were those of just recent decades past. In the 1800s and centuries previous the pioneer folk had it unimaginably difficult. People grew soft - and had no idea. City folk could not even begin to do the work of the real farmers who still ran small farms. A US candidate for president once promised 40 acres and a mule. I always said that the only way I would have possibly made it through the first winter was to eat the mule. The pioneers were survivalists and had survival skills beyond any that we can imagine. In addition to not having the "toughness", work habits and skills of the early pioneers - we do not have their resources. There are no buffalo herds and there is nowhere near that the deer and antelope play in sufficient number to support most survivors. Those who have taken survival courses that have taught them to go out into the woods and survive will be sorely disappointed. Such animals that have survived the radiation will be in very short supply relative to the survivors that would be in competition for them. One will not have the horses, wagons or other implements that were necessary to pioneer survival. There will be a far larger population survive than there were pioneers a few centuries ago and there will be far fewer resources of the kind that sustained them. The early settlers of our village were confidant in their ability to find in a few minutes enough fish in the stream to make supper. Even in my early days in the village a person could promise the night before that they would go out on the bridge out our back door and get fresh fish for breakfast - and make good their promise. But those days are gone. Fished out and poisoned out by salt on the roads and pesticide run-off from the farmer's fields. At this writing fish no longer come safe even from the farmer's markets without warnings that they are hazardous to expectant mothers. No, we can't return to the old days - even if we want to. But fortunately we have many, many other advantages. We don't have to cut the forests to gain agricultural ground. We know many things the pioneers did not. Childbirth was a great hazard to pioneer women - simply because people did not know to wash their hands. We have a great advantage in modern knowledege - but we may well need to supplement that, at least for a while, with some of the pioneer knowledge and skills that we have forgotten about. That is the purpose of this page. This page does not stand by itself, anymore than do any of the others. There may be some items just as important to the subject that will be found in the pages on simplified machinery and small farming but all that information will probably be just as important to know - if not more so. Table of Contents: Simple Machines: Descriptions of Simple Machines This 81 page .pdf book from MIT explains how to build dozens of primitive machines, drills, lathes, pumps, and all sorts of other useful devices. Farm Devices: Patterns for Simple Farm Devices This 150 page .pdf book shows how farmers built their own devices in the 1700s and 1800s (and for perhaps centuries earlier). Practical ideas that are still used today. Scythes: A tool of the centuries Scythes: particularly this century This is one of the most basic and essential tools of the centuries. Along with ax, hoe, hammer and shovel, it has been essential to the establishment of civilization. Largely displaced by modern harvesting methods it is a technology that may need to be at least temporarily "recovered". Blacksmithing: Blacksmithing essential technology This 132 page .pdf book covers an essential technology that may have to be recovered. About a hundred years ago every village would have one or more blacksmiths, but then the skill largely disappeared except as retained by farriers (horse shoeing is another subject) and some ornamental artists. Farm Blacksmithing: This may seem like it should be under farming - but this tells how to set up a basic blacksmith shop. Just don't believe the prices. Shop Practice: home_made_air_pump.htm This may seem especially strange here - but blacksmiths need forges and forges need airpumps. Shop Practice: Farm Shop Practice This 324 page book sort of goes along with the above ones on setting up a blacksmith shop. In case you wonder why I didn't put it under 'farming', the reason is that in the early stages of recovery I figure that EVERYTHING goes under farming, and I just try to break it out into subcategories. Home / U.S. Map / Reconstruction / Recovery / Renewal / Survival / Ark Two

Stills

Stills

The Problem of Stills I am personally a teetotaler and totally opposed to the use of alcohol as a recreational drink. Still alcohol does have its medicinal purposes and can also be used as an antiseptic and as an aesthetic. In fact in may be about the only aesthetic available until the production of ether can be established. More importantly, here we are principally talking about the use of stills for making fuel. With all the surplus rotting potatoes in our area we would have liked to make a still and produce fuel for our diesel generators. But, presently, there is a $100,000 annual fine (license) for doing so. We will simply have to wait for a more propitious time. The building and operation of a still takes some skill but it is not what we would call a high-tech operation. After all, the skill is most often identified with hillbilly moonshine makers. During WW2, when their big refineries were being bombed, the Germans successfully met much of their needs with small 'backyard' units and this may in part be the basis of the US outlawing their operation, but in the future it may also be part of the solution for our fuel needs. The designs here will at least demonstrate the principles involved. It may be largely a matter of scale to get up to larger volumes needed for fuel. I am totally rewriting this page in 2012 from what it was a decade ago. Back then when we put out thousands of CDs, much of the information, because it was copyrighted by someone else, was in files that couldn't be unlocked (until given the key) . We had bought many books on the subject but weren't able to pass information on ahead of time. Today, I feel that there is much better information available on the Internet. The problem with the following link and the videos is that that they reside on other web sites - and can disappear at anytime. The following is the only link that survives from our previous web page on stills. It is still quite good. LINK: Running on Alcohol In the last ten years, the quality of the information available has much improved, but whatever it is, it will do you no good unless you avail yourself of it. This next link contains a lot of the more recent insights. LINK: PDF on Small Scale Alcohol Production in Local Communities If you are interested in this subject - then I highly recommend that you watch the following two videos while they are available, and make yourself notes about them.

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Solar Energy

Solar Energy

Solar Overview This is one of those pages that I am completely rewriting in 2012 - a decade after the Solar Energy page on our free CDs. The efficiency of using solar power for creating electrical energy has improved perhaps several fold in the last decade. Unfortunately, solar panels operate only during daytime. On days that are cloudy, and in locations not near enough to the equator so that you get proper sun angles and that you have long nights, they are less efficient still. Consequently, for us in Canada, commercial solar panels presently have a payout of many decades, which means, given interest rates, the value of money, the life expectancy of the panels themselves, and human life expectancy - they just are not a practical way to go in most situations. They have application for some small off-grid power requirements in very remote locations but that is about it in many parts of the world. In outerspace with 24 hour sunlight they may be the cat's meow - but nothing that we need to concern ourselves about in a nuclear recovery situation. After a nuclear war, solar power for making electricity is probably not going to be an option unless one happens to find some salvagable solar panels. I obtained books on the subject of making "hobbyist" solar panels. The panels are so terribly inefficient that it is just not a practical way to go at all. However, sunlight is a great power source for stills, solar cookers and as a means of heating water. Those are the applications that are treated here. Cooking: An overall survey of solar cookers. Cooking 1: A survey of REFLECTOR solar cookers. This is a subject that is treated in other sections such as the one on food preparation. The above link will take you there. Cooking 2: A survey of BOX solar cookers. Because there are so many different designs of solar cookers the information referenced here has been narrowed to what seemed most applicable to the anticipated immediate needs of nuclear survivors. Cooking 3: A very simple design. This is a detailed explanation about one exceptionally simple design. With more time and resources one will probably wish to consider one of the other designs in the links above. This design, however, has the additional advantage in that it is very portable. Hotwater: This is a primer on solar hotwater heating. Hotwater 2: Build Your Own Solar Water Heater. I have noticed since I did this page ten years ago that where before so much stuff was copyrighted and I couldn't use it, now many of the links are just teasers to get you to buy their book or something. HOWEVER, here is a link to lots of free plans. There are lots of links on the Internet about using the sun as a resource and there are many, many things you can do do with it besides cook food and heat water. Everything from the simple clothes line for drying clothes to elaborate systems of mirrors, one such as we have, for focusing heat to such intensity that it will melt steel. However, with Google having developed the way that it has, most everyone can now find this information. The focus of our website has greatly changed. Twice. First we were oriented towards telling people how to prepare to survive. How to build fallout shelters and so forth. Then we progressed to providing thousands of links to information about skills that would be needed in a Recovery stage. While remnants of these activities remain, our focus is now on the subject of Reconstruction of Society after nuclear WW3 or some other destruction of on a similar scale.

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Alternate Energy

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Alternate Energy Table of Contents: Overview: On Alternate Energy. The problems of producing your own. Electricity: Make your own We have built many of our own generators. Here we tell you how to do it - using wind, water, bicycles and other means. Bikes: Not just for riding Bikes are a very much overlooked energy source. They can be used to operate all sorts of machines and they can be used to generate electricity. Biofuel: Grow it on the farm Biofuels are used as a substitute for diesel. They can be grown and processed on the farm. They do not require a still. Stills: Make your own fuel from potatoes, corn, etc. These are a bit trickier and at the present generally illegal, or at the very minimum you can get into a lot of legal hassle. Solar: Using the sun for energy. While it is impractical to home build solar cells for generating electricity, solar is great for cooking and other applications like heating water. Click here to return to the Individual Agricultural Recovery After Nuclear Holocaust The Problem of Producing Your Own There are many problems in developing and installing independent power systems. For one thing the government is not helpful. To say the least. It is not just our project that finds these hurdles but many others have been stopped also. In the second previous century our local water courses were used for power but in the last hundred years everything possible has been done to prevent their use, including dynamiting what was the main local power producing dam. The government centralized production for economies of scale and did not want competition. Then during the depression when costs were such that the farmers could not afford the electricity from the monopoly the farmers again started a generator at the dam and this is when the system was taken back over by the government and the dam dynamited. With all the surplus rotting potatoes in the area we might also make a still and produce fuel for our diesel generators. But, presently, there is a $100,000 annual fine for doing so. We will simply have to wait for a more propitious time. Click here to return to the Table of Contents

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Wind powered Generators

Wind Powered Generators Many more people will have wind as a resource than will have water as a resource. The principles of building a generator remain very much the same for both but wind has a number of special considerations and anyone considering this as a resource should look at the pages linked below: Towers: You have to get them up in the air Blades: Or what some people call propellers Tails: And mounting the generator Designs: Designs for complete wind generating units Most homemade windmill generator systems need a LOW RPM generator and you will find under our above linked webpage many designs applicable to windmill generators. Testing: An important step Batteries Another essential subject to wind generator systems is batteries to store excess power in times of high generation and to make power available when there is no wind. Batteries are discussed on another one of our other web pages.

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Construction of a 10' diameter Wind Turbine

With Furling Tail

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Para Español, traducción de Julio Andrade.

These pages are HUGE with lots of photos to download, so please be patient...it may take some time. All of the diagrams drawn with DanCAD are scanned larger than they appear on these pages. Sometimes they don't show very clearly, depending on your screen size. If you have trouble reading a diagram -- first try Right Click --> View Image to enlarge it. You can also do Right Click --> Save Image or Right Click --> Print Image to get the hi-res version.

This is a sort of diary about how we built the last 5 windturbines, all of which are pretty much identical. The windmills use axial field, dual rotor alternators, with a furling tail system and a 10 foot diameter 3 blade prop. It's very much inspired and along the lines of Hugh Piggott's latest design. Click Here to visit his site for lots of useful information.

The windturbine I'm describing here turns very freely and should start generating power at, or below 7mph. Click here to see a less detailed page about a nearly identical machine I helped a neighbor build earlier in the summer. They spin easily, they start charging in low winds, and seem to work pretty well. They are quiet, slow.. and seem safe and strong. Time will tell, this is an experiment!
Here is a fairly complete list of the materials we used, not including the tower.
80" of 1/2 - 13 allthread
10" of 1/4 - 20 allthread
44 1/2 - 13 nuts
2 1/4 - 20 nuts
1 washer 2" outer dia and 1/2" inner dia
6' of 3/4" steel pipe
6.5" of 1" steel pipe
2' of 2" X 3/16" steel bar stock
3 or 4' of 1" X 1/8" steel bar stock
A half of 1/2" plywood
about 6 square feet of 3/8" plywood
18" square piece of 3/4" plywood
A little bit of 1/4" masonite and misc lumber scraps for the coil winder
A quart of polyester resin and some fiberglass fabric
A bottle of baby (talcum) powder
thin viscosity superglue and accellerator for hardening coils
5 pounds of AWG 14 magnet wire
24 NdFeB magnets 2" diameter X 1/2" thick
strut tube/wheel spindle assembly from a volvo 240
2 11" diameter brake rotors from a volvo 740 or 850
3 boards, 5' long and at least 1.5" thick and 7.5" wide
lots of 1.5" long wood screws, at least 60
And for tools, I used common hand tools and power tools. A metal lathe is nice for this - there are a couple quick simple things that can't be done easily without it. The lathe work is easy and any machine shop could do it quickly and cheaply for you. A bit of redesigning and one could live without it. I had a welder, a drill press, belt sander, power planer.. the usual! A draw knife is a MUST HAVE for carving the prop. I'd not try this project without a reasonable workspace and plenty of tools. For me, it takes about 30 hours to build one - I don't fret too much about little details or getting things just perfect.
The most expensive part of the project is the magnets, they cost around $250. The rest of the cost depends on what gets purchased new, what gets salvaged, and resources on hand. I like to use salvaged, or recycled materials whenever possible. I'd figure the cost of the whole system not including batteries or a tower to be around $300-$400. In the end we get a machine which performs quite well, especially in low windspeeds. I think one would be lucky to get similar performance from a commercial machine costing less than $1500. I think it's a great way to go so long as the recources are on hand and so long as it's fun! In the end there is a wind turbine which the builder understands, and feels comfortable maintaining, modifying, and repairing.
This page will often have pictures of different machines in progress. When we built these, I had 2 neighbors come by and we worked together on 3 machines at one time to make things a bit more efficient and fun!


Pictured above are the Volvo 240 strut assemblies we start with. Volvo made the 240 for almost 20 years! They should be easy to find. We have to remove any extra parts that come with the strut assembly.
We'll need to remove the strut inside (shock absorber), any brake parts, and the spring. One should probably either pay a shop to remove the spring, or get a spring compressor. These springs are under quite a bit of tension in this assembly. Simply loosening the large nut which holds all this together will result in the spring popping off with quite a lot of force! I've seen them fly over 20', if you are not very careful this could be quite dangerous. We'll take the wheel hub off, remove the bearings - clean and re-grease them. The Volvos are nice, they have very nice large wheel bearings which may never wear out in this application. Compared to banging your Volvo up and down the road, these bearings don't see much stress in a wind turbine application.


The Volvo 240 comes with 10" diameter brake rotors. I prefer a bit more diameter for a machine this large, so I found larger rotors on some of the newer Volvos - and they fit the same bolt pattern. Brake rotors on modern cars get thrown away frequently. Our local Volvo shop always has a dumpster full of them! Each machine requires 2 11" diameter brake rotors, these will be the "armature" for the alternator. Each rotor will have 12 magnets fixed to it.


I like to turn down the inside of the brake rotors just a bit. This leaves a rougher, yet flat surface for gluing the magnets down. We also leave a very thin lip on the very outer edge of the rotor to help with placing the magnets in a concentric circle - and to help hold the magents in against the centrifugal force they'll see when the alternator is turning quickly. This is an easy operation- if I didn't have a lathe I think any automotive machine shop could do it quickly.
The other important operation with the lathe, is to bore the hole in the middle of 1 brake rotor a bit larger so that it can fit over the back side of the wheel hub. The picture below will hopefully show that.


The picture above shows how 5 long studs, made from the 1/2" - 13 allthread will hold all this together. The coils will exist between the two brake rotors, in between the magnets. These brake rotors were designed to fit over the front of the wheel hub, and the hole in the middle is not quite large enough to fit over the backside of it, so this is why we need to turn it out just a bit with the lathe. I suppose this could be done with a grinder or something...


Above is shown the brake rotors after being turned. You can see that the hole in the ones on the left is slightly larger than those on the right. After machining them, we clean them carefully with paint thinner or gasoline so that we can glue the magnets on later.


Tom is cutting pieces on the saw. It's nice to get a list of all the parts you need to cut and get it over with in one shot. Here Tom is cutting a 5' piece of 3/4" pipe, 5 pieces of 1/2"-13 allthread 10" long, 3 pieces of 1/2"-13allthread 6" long, 1 piece of 3/4" pipe about 6" long, and 1 piece of 1" pipe about 6.5" long. We also need 3 pieces of 2" barstock cut at 7" long, with a 120 deg angle on one end. These are for the bracket which will hold the stator in place. A picture of that is below. It's important to be careful and try to leave nice edges when cutting allthread, either with a bandsaw or a hacksaw! It saves time... cleaning all these ends up with a grinder so the nuts will thread on is tedious and completely unnecessary if you make careful and clean cuts.


Pictured above are some of those pieces I described above.


Above we can see the strut assembly mostly stripped of it's extra parts. The picture below will show how we need to cut this up and weld it back together to make the furling system work.


In the older and simpler wind turbines I made there was no system by which the machine could turn away from high winds. In this one there is, and part of that simple system requires that the alternator be offset to the side of the tower a bit. So we need to cut up the strut tube! I used a bandsaw, it could be done with a torch, grinder, or hacksaw. The picture above describes (hopefully) how we cut it and weld it together. The angle is not critical, and things should work fine so long as the center of the wheel spindle is about 4"-5" to the side of the main tube which fits over the tower (yaw bearing).


The picture above shows how we weld the tail pivot to the strut assembly. The 2" tall 20 degree wedge is important for this. Looking at the picture, you can see also how the tail fits over the 3/4" pipe we welded on and pivots. The tail is welded to the 1" pipe, which should allow it to pivot over the 3/4" pipe. I've noticed that some 1" pipe fits nicely over 3/4" pipe, and some does not. It's probably wise to check when buying the pipe! I wound up having to grind ours down a bit to make things fit.
At some point we'll grind (or cut) a notch in the 1" pipe to which the tail is welded. This notch will serve as the stop to determine where the tail rests in normal operation and where it stops in high winds when it's completely furled away from the wind.


Above you can see the assembly described in the last picture. Again, there are 3 because we were building 3 machines at one time.


The drawing above shows the stator bracket I mentioned earlier, and how it will be welded to the assembly we've been making.


Here we see the basic frame for the windturbine with the stator brackets welded on. Now we can start really building the alternator!


Above I've drawn some details about the coil winder I used. We need to make this because we need 9 nice tight identical coils. Each coil will be 65 windings of AWG 14 enameled magnet wire. Basicly the coil winder is made up of two disks 4" diameter. I drill them 1/4" in the middle so they fit over 1/4" allthread tightly. The shaft and crank are of one piece of 1/4 - 20 allthread with a crank bent on the end. The back disk in the winder is thick wood (1/4") and it fits tightly over the allthread and it glued on there. The center part of the spool is of 3/8" material - this is the part we'll wind the wire over. I like to sand it very smooth, and give it a slight taper (so the front is slightly narrower and shorter than the back) so that the finished coils slide off easily. The front of the coil winder has a slot so we can drop the wire in there and tie it off to the shaft when we start winding a new coil. Before using it, I wax it carefully. (well be putting glue on the coils and this keeps the coil from getting glued down!) We bolt the front on it, drop the end of the wire in the slot (leaving about 10" sticking out) - and wrap the end around the shaft to secure it. I hold the wire with tension in one hand while winding with the other, taking care to keep the wire reasonably tight, and the windings pretty neat. It goes very quickly. The drawing shows about the size the coils should come out. Once the coil is done, before removing it I put a bit of thin viscosity super glue on it. It soaks into the coil tightly gluing all the windings together and making the coil quite hard and tough. I then spritz the coil with accelerator and the glue dries instantly. It's a neat sort of glue, very handy! Click here to find that on our shopping cart. Once the glue is hard the coil should be easy to remove. Sometimes they are a bit tight and gentle prying with a butter knife or something helps.


Pictured above is the glue, the coil winder with the lid off showing a coil... and a few coils I wound. Once all 9 coils are wound we're almost ready to build the stator! First we have to make a mold.


The mold we made is very simple, the picture above leaves little to be explained. It's all screwed together. It's important to sand it well, and leave the insides slightly tapered so that the casting will slip out easily. In the bottom of the mold I take a heavy black marker and draw lines at 40 deg to each other so that we have exact spaces to put our 9 coils. The lines should be heavy so we can see them through 1 layer of fiberglass material and some resin.


Pictured above is the finished mold. The dark purple spots are caulk we used to fill gaps and cracks between wood... this just helps the casting come out more easily. Before using the mold, we need to put some kind of release agent in there. Auto polish wax works great... we didn't have any so we used axle grease! Lard, butter... I'm sure lots of things would work fine!


We need some fiberglass in the stator for strength. Pictured above DanF is cutting out 2 rings of fiberglass fabric exactly the size of the stator, 14" diameter with a 5" hole in the middle. We'll have one of these on each side of the coils for reinforcement.


Pictured above we are wiping axle grease all over the mold to assure things will come out easily in the end.


We mix up a little polyester resin and put it in the bottom of the mold. Then we lay the fiberglass fabric over that, and pour a little more resin over the top. We work it in with gloves so the fiberglas is completely soaked in resin. At that point it becomes somewhat transparent so we can see the lines we drew in the bottom of the mold and we can tell exactly where the coils should be placed. Something to note about polyester resin: It smells bad! Some folks will get headaches... it's the sort of horrible smell that can stick with you for hours! A respirator is probably wise. You don't want it in your eyes, so safety goggles would be apprpriate. It's sticky - messy, so wear latex gloves or something to keep it off your skin and hands.


Pictured above we've layed the coils in the mold, as you can see they fit pretty tightly! This picture is actually from an earlier machine so it's not quite right. Since then I've shortened the coils a bit and made the hole in the center of the mold a bit smaller so that the coils have less wire in them, lower resistance - and don't come quite so close to the outer edge of the mold. It's important to push the coils in towards the center of the mold as much as possible so they are existing directly beneath the magnet rotors. The leads from the coils should stick out the sides in an organized fashion. Each coil has a "start" - the inside lead, and an "end"- the outside lead - I like to keep them organized so that wiring them up is easy later on. At this point we mix up more resin and add some talcum powder - mix it up real well. By volume, a half and half mix is reasonable though it could be thinner. The talcum powder adds some strength and lets the resin go a bit further. We pour that into the mold till the coils are covered, and then lay on top the other fiberglass fabric ring. We can then mix up a little more resin (without talc) and pour it over the top making sure the fabric is completely soaked and transparent.


Once the resin is poured we put the lid on the mold and put lots of weight on it to keep things clamped down and flat. Best is to leave it like this overnight.... I get impatient and usually wait about 2 hours!


And here we have an almost finished stator! All we have now to make a functional alternator is to bolt it on, wire it up, and add a couple of magnet rotors. Lots of pictures in this page and LOTS more to go!

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©2003 by FORCEFIELD

This page last updated 9/29/2003

An Easier Homemade Anemometer

Built using a digital bicycle speedometer

The completed anemometer cup and sensor assembly.

Sigma Sport Targa digital bicycle speedometer -- about US$25 at any bike shop.

DanF's Easter Egg Anemometer has been up and flying beautifully for 2 years now. This new design is much easier and quicker to build, but costs a little bit more initially. We learned how to build it during our trip to Guemes Island, WA for Hugh Piggott's homebuilt wind power seminar for SEI. It uses a digital bicycle speedometer to count pulses from a magnet and reed switch on the anemometer cup assembly, and the speedometer translates this automatically to mph or kph. It also keeps track of your maximum gust, average windspeed, and total wind miles -- so it works as a wind odometer too! Very useful for doing wind power site evaluations.

Parts List

• Digital Bicycle Speedometer -- We used a Sigma Sport Targa because of the peak speed, average, and odometer features. It's available at almost any bicycle shop for about US$25.
• Anemometer Cup and Hub Assembly -- We used a pre-built Polycarbonate (Lexan®) cup and hub assembly. It's available on our web Shopping Cart. You could use any commercial or homebuilt cup assembly for this. Check out our Easter Egg Anemometer page for details on how to build your own.
• NdFeB Magnet -- The magnet that comes with the speedometer is a rod shape, and we found it easier to fit a 3/8 inch diameter by 1/16 inch thick disc magnet to the cup assembly rather than the rod. It's Item #75 on our Shopping Cart, and costs only US$0.20.
• Bearing Assembly -- Many different designs of bearing assembly will work. You want it to spin as freely as possible, so you can get better response and also measure very low wind speeds. For this project, we used the same ball bearing DC brushless PM motor as in our Easter Egg Anemometer, and we removed the coils to make it spin more freely....we just need the bearing for this project. The motor costs only US$2.50. It's Item#2105 on our shopping cart. You could use any sort of bearing assembly you can devise from scratch, just make sure it spins VERY freely.
• PVC reducer fitting -- 2 inch to 1.5 inch white PVC reducer coupling.
• 3 Machine screws -- #4-40 , 1/4 inch long.
• Glue -- epoxy, PVC cement, and thread lock compound are needed.
• Tap -- a #4-40 tap, available at hardware stores.
• Mounting supplies -- 1.5 inch diameter PVC pipe for mast; telephone or other thin wire to extend sensor wire.

Assembly

Cut the PVC pipe reducer off with a hacksaw right at the flange, on the big 2 inch side. This gives a wide, tapered rim surface to mount the bearing assembly to. See photos below. Using a file, cut a notch in the flange just big enough to fit the sensor from your bike speedometer. Cut it deep enough so that the sensor can ride flush with the pipe.

Place the bearing assembly upside down in a vise so it's suspended by the flange. DON'T tighten the vise. Gently tap the center bearing loose from the back using a Phillips screwdriver and small hammer. Or press it out on your drill press. Gently pry the coils out using a flathead screwdriver. Gently press the motor back together -- if you go all the way back in now, the motor will bind and not spin freely!
Optionally, you can skip that entire step. However, there will be a bit more resistance in the bearings from cogging, and it will take a couple more mph of wind to set your anemometer spinning. By prying the motor open, you also risk bending and ruining it. So you might want to have an extra available if you try this. The performance difference is very small with the coils left in. Our success has been mixed with removing the coils from these motors -- it's hard to get them back together so they are tight but still spin freely.

Disassembled Motor

Coils removed from Motor

Drill out the center of the hub with a 1/4 inch hole. The exact center is already drilled with a tiny hole, so it's easy to get it perfect.
To mark the anemometer hub for drilling the mounting holes, we cut off 3 small nails with wirecutters, and dropped them point-up into 3 of the small holes in the motor. We then centered the hub around the motor shaft (si it does not touch the shaft) and pressed down to mark the holes. See photo below. Then drill your 3 holes.

Nails in motor for marking hub holes.

Completed anemometer hub assembly

Now, tap your 3 mounting holes in the motor. Don't push any deeper than the holes already are, or you will distort the metal and sieze up the bearing -- it'll be ruined. Assemble the anemometer cups onto the hub -- they press in, but you have to press hard! Put thread lock compound on the #4-40 machine screws, and attach the cup and hub assembly to the motor. Try it, and it should spin freely by just blowing on the cups. This is essential -- it should spin in the slightest breeze. And it should be nearly perfectly centered on the bearing. To seal the top (acutally the bottom, after mounting the thing upside down) we just epoxied a poker chip on there to cover it -- perfect size!

Completed anemometer hub assembly, mounted in PVC reducer, with sensor attached.

Next you'll need to install the trigger magnet and rpm sensor switch, then mount the cup, hub, and bearing assembly into the sawed-off reducer. Mount a small NdFeB magnet to the inner shoulder of the cup assembly with epoxy. Use a file to notch the PVC reducer mount to accept the sensor that came with the bike speedometer. We simply used epoxy to glue the sensor tightly in the notch. Be sure to test the sensor before glueing it into place! The range at which it will trigger depends on the location and strength of the magnet. Ours triggered best at about 1/8" clearance between the magnet and sensor. We found the sensor triggered best by pointing the small end of it right at the magnet (see picture above). The sensor wire with the speedometer is only a couple feet long, so we snipped it and used telephone wire to extend it to 20 feet long, so it could run right into the house for mounting the speedometer disply inside. We used small machine screws and epoxy for mounting the bearing assembly.

Finished unit, ready for pole mounting.

Because of how our bearing assembly is built, there's a big chance that water could get down inside the bearing assembly and ruin it. So we opted for mounting these anemometers upside down, with the mounting pipe pointed down. The mount can be any design you come up with with 1.5 inch PVC pipe, using Tees, 90 deg bends, anything that fits your mounting area.

Testing and Calibration

For testing the new anemometer, I once again used my truck testing rig. It's simply a pipe mounted in the bed of my pickup that sticks up 6 feet over the top of the cab. Just be careful about overhead power lines and branches while you are testing! The only problem with truck testing anemometers -- is that even the slightest breeze will completely destroy your test results. You'll need to find an absolutely breezeless day for calibration. If you already have another anemometer that's calibrated (or rent one from the local renewable energy store for a day), you can just mount your new one near the old one and compare the readings.
The bike speedometer uses the measured circumference of a bicycle tire to calculate the bike's speed, using the number of tire revoluitions per minute as tallied by the sensor mounted ot the bike and the magnet mounted to the wheel. But with anemometer cups, there's a bunch of 'slip' involved -- the cups to not catch all the wind that goes by. So you can't just enter the anemometer's circumference into the speedometer. That's why calibration by some method is required. With our 2 anemometers, the offset number entered into the speedometer was 1320 (mm). If your unit is showing a higher speed than the truck or test anemometer, you increase the diameter that you enter into the computer. If your anemometer reads low, you decrease the diameter. A change of 5-10 mm makes a big difference! But after fiddling with it for a while, you should be able to get very close. If you get widely varying readings -- there is probably too much breeze for testing.

Fun Features of the Bike Speedometer

The speedometer computer has some fairly sophisticated data acquisition features, available by pushing buttons. You can have it track the maximum speed recorded, at reset it at your leisure. Using the odometer on the Targa unit, you can also track total wind miles -- a feature found only on expensive commercial scientific anemometers! It will also track your average windspeed -- but keep in mind this is a different figure than 'average windspeed' as rated for a potential wind power site. The bike speedometer ONLY averages the wind when the wind is blowing. True 'average site wind speed' readings take into account all the hours that the wind is not blowing at all. But the information can still be useful when designing or selecting a wind turbine.

We hope you enjoy building this project as much as we did. It's a very quick and simple way to build a very accurate anemometer. Thanks to Ed Kennel of the University of Washington for showing us this system out on Guemes Island!

More Homebrew Wind Power Information on Our Site:

Tips on Designing and Building a Wind Generator at Home	Choosing Alternators/Generators for Wind Power
Glossary of Wind Power Terms	Building a Tower

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This page last updated 8/14/2003