Yesterday we took down
Dave's Wind turbine at the caboose. It was not yawing so well, and it had been up there with 0 attention (you cannot even see it from his home) for over 16 months now. We built Daves in May 2003, and I'd made it so that the bottom of the wind turbine would sit on a flat spot on the top of the tower. Over time, it had worn into the backet on the tower so that it couldn't yaw very easily anymore. It was still working fine, but it took a decent wind to yaw it. Between that, and the fact that it was due for some fresh grease, and a new coat of linseed oil on the blades... we figured it was wise to do all this before winter hit.
There's a picture of Fred and Dave reassembling it after we'd greased the bearing, recoated the blades - and welded a nice thick (3/8") washer on the top of the machine so that it would be held up on the tower from the top of the machine like all the other wind turbines we've made since. After running for over 16 months it was surprising to see no wear on either the yaw bearing, or the tail bearing. In fact, the grease we'd put there when we raised it was still fine... it really didn't require anymore. The wheel bearing was still well greased too - and it was in quite good shape and needed no adjustment. I added fresh grease everywhere anyhow.
When we built this tower last spring, we raised it with a truck. Pretty tricky, because this tower sits on top of some rocks at the very top of a hill, the ground is not level, and in the lowered position, the tower is actually pointing downhill quite a bit. The trick is, to lower it - without dropping the machine off the end. We had the wires attached and tied off on the wind turbine, and before we lower it - we tie the wires off at the bottom. This helps to hold it on - it's tempting to back that up with a steel cable. At any rate - rasing and lowering this with a truck is tricky and not very safe for the windmill. Here we've lagged a $20 harbour freight worm gear winch to a tree stump. These inexpensive winches are pretty powerful - but hand cranking it takes forever. The shaft is conveniently 1/2"... so we put a drill on there where the crank used to go. It goes pretty smoothly. This is actually the 4th such winch we've installed recently for raising/lowering towers. We use the very same winch to raise Scotts 50' tower, it works fine.
Click Here for the page about building Daves tower last June.
It was also encouraging to see, after over 16 months, absolutley no erosion on the prop. This machine actually runs fairly fast because of the very long line (over 300' @ 12 volts). It could have everything to do with our location, or... it could be that the somewhat rubbery finish that linseed oil leaves holds up better to that sort of thing than brittle enamel. Hard to say.... probably both. It's fun to see how they hold up anyhow. This machine looks pretty ugly compared to some moree recent ones... I think perhaps it has to do with my new welder, my new (used) portable bandsaw helps... and perhaps lots of practice! It still works pretty well though and seems to be holding up fine so far. Dave relys on this machine for most of his electricity... he has a single solar panel which helps out some too. He has no other incoming power though. It's all more than enough for him to run his lights, his computer... his coffee grinder and the stereo.
