Vol. LXVIII. No. 4003. 
NEW YORK, JULY 17, 1909. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
LIGHT AND POWER FROM FARM BROOK. 
Branching Out a Little. 
Something more than a year ago The R. N.-Y. 
printed a short story of the little electric light 
plant installed on Hillside Farm. Since then the 
plant has spread itself a bit, and we have had an 
opportunity for considerably more trouble and ex¬ 
perience, so I am moved to add a little to the story. 
I may briefly re-state that the work has been done 
on a very small but fairly permanent stream, and 
that an old mill site was utilized. There was a 
grist mill at this point as early as 1795, and later a 
little woolen mill, which in its palmy days probably 
never employed 20 operatives, and which was aban¬ 
doned *soon after 1850. From that time up until 
two years ago the little stream did nothing but turn 
a very primitive sawmill for a few weeks in early 
Spring, but there re¬ 
mained at least one as¬ 
set of considerable value, 
viz., the old earth dam 
strengthened and sup¬ 
ported by the fibrous 
roots of ancient willow 
trees, some of them 
more than three feet in 
diameter. I may add 
that once you get an 
earthen dam thoroughly 
filled with willow roots 
it is about as tough and 
safe from erosion as an 
old felt boot. Newly 
placed earth, however, 
crumbles and melts away 
in running water like a 
snow bank in April sun¬ 
shine. Many parts of 
this old earth dam would 
endure a heavy flow of 
water over the crest ab¬ 
solutely without injury. 
The old dam had two 
broken and rotten spill¬ 
ways and aprons, and 
these we have replaced 
with substantial concrete 
construction essentially 
as advised in larger en¬ 
gineering projects. 
We have learned to 
handle concrete on this 
farm in many ways, and 
to do it rapidly and 
cheaply with regular farm labor. In dam building, 
however, stick either to earth or concrete. Wood 
rots and leaks and gives away, and is an abomina¬ 
tion generally. The fall or head of water is about 
15 feet, and the water-wheel is a nine-inch turbine, 
which, under this head, should generate about 4 y 2 
horse-power, and should use about 165 cubic feet of 
water per minute. As a general statement, we calcu¬ 
late on about 10 ordinary 16 candle-power carbon 
lamps for each available horse-power. Theoretically, 
without allowing for losses of various kinds, a horse¬ 
power should carry about 14 lamps of this type. This 
is a very small turbine wheel, and the openings into 
it are 12 in number, each one about four ' inches 
long by less than three-quarters of an inch in width, 
when fully open. It is surprising how easily these 
openings become clogged through floating trash in 
the water. Just at the time the leaves are falling is 
a bad time in this respect. Then a floating twig may 
come along and happen to pass through a rack, with 
bars only one-half inch apart, and later may enter 
the wheel and make trouble. So just now we are 
covering the rack with galvanized screen of one- 
fourth inch mesh, which must prevent trouble in this 
regard. Our troubles have in the main been with 
the power rather than the electrical end of the propo¬ 
sition. But with this one matter of trash kept away 
from the wheel by a suitable screen, the turbine 
is remarkably efficient, and will run almost indefi¬ 
nitely practically without attention. 
Most good, modern installations of turbines adopt 
the iron case, which costs as much, and in large 
sizes a good deal more, than the wheel itself. In 
our case, however, in the interests of rather rigid 
economy, the wheel was set in a wooden case. Such 
a case or. flume must be built two or three times as 
stout as you think can possibly be necessary, and 
then tied together with iron rods, otherwise it will 
spring enough to leak and worse, make trouble in 
■•'i a 
■ 
kr 
A NEGLECTED WATER POWER IN MICHIGAN. Fig. 3S9. 
opening and closing the gate, and also throw the 
wheel shaft out of line. If one has the money there 
is no doubt that the horizontal type of wheel in an 
iron case is best, but they are very much more ex¬ 
pensive. Usually a water-wheel governor will be 
necessary, but if your water supply is abundant, it 
may be better to let the wheel run without a gov¬ 
ernor and depend upon a rheostat or similar device 
for regu'ating the voltage. But one or the other is 
a prime necessity, because it is a principle of elec¬ 
tric generators that the voltage or current strength 
varies even more than the speed. Thus if a gen¬ 
erator was giving a suitable voltage at 1.400 revolu¬ 
tions per minute it would be quite too great for the 
good of the lamps if it should run up to 1 , 500 , vet 
this is just what would occur if a small part of the 
load was taken off and no governor was ready par¬ 
tially to close the gate. Electrical machinery must 
have rather close speed regulation. 
Probably it will be safe to say that in all cases 
where the power is more than a quarter of a mile 
froitl tiie house, it will be best to use a generator 
with a voltage of 220 to 250. We made the mistake 
of using the more common 110 volt system. 
I"or some time, now, we have been using electricity 
to heat a heavy flatiron for laundry purposes. This 
iron is rather heavier than the usual flat, and is 
adapted for continuous work on heavy goods. In 
fact, they complain that it is too hot for light work 
like shirtwaists. Stamped on the handle is a state¬ 
ment that this flat consumes 550 watts of current, 
or, in other words, the same as ten 16 candle lamps. 
My personal impression is that it uses more power 
than a dozen lamps, so that you cannot expect to 
run many of these with a small plant. They are, 
however, made in much smaller sizes for light work. 
This iron becomes abundantly hot for use in from 
six to H) minutes after it is attached, and will stay 
so hour after hour without any attention on the part 
of the user. The ladies 
of the house are most 
enthusiastic in its praise. 
Such an iron costs about 
$5, and saves much work. 
For some time past 
we have been adapting 
electricity to a motor for 
running the cream sep¬ 
arator. This is on one 
horse-power motor run¬ 
ning from 1,700 to 1,900 
revolutions per minute. 
The separator is a late 
type of De Laval Baby 
3,, with a capacity of 
1,200 pounds per hour, 
and the motor is per¬ 
fection for the work. 
We have had a separa¬ 
tor on the farm since 
1891, wdien a farm sep¬ 
arator was a new and 
rare thing, to be looked 
upon with suspicion, and 
we have gone through 
the various stages of 
running it by hand and 
then for many years by 
steam, but we never 
knew the perfection of 
power until we hitched 
it to a water-wheel 3,600 
feet away. This motor 
can be set on the floor, 
as we have it, or it may 
be bolted to the side 
wall, or it may be hung overhead. It will run 
equally well in either position, and literally by the 
month, without oiling after the oil wells are once 
filled. Of course, there is the buzz of the separator, 
but the motor is practically noiseless—a pleasing 
contrast to the clank commonly associated with the 
small steam engine. The speed also is more uni¬ 
form than we ever got out of an engine governor. 
A motor of this kind costs about $50, perhaps a little 
more. 
There is, of course, one interesting question that 
some one will ask: “How about this plant in the 
dry weather last Summer?” Well, there was a good 
deal of time in August and September when we had 
lights only a few hours per week. A tight dam 
will gather sufficient water for a little wheel for 
a few hours per day, even from a slender rill, but 
last Summer it was so dry that we almost failed 
even to get a rill. There is a strong spring a half 
mile up stream that never entirely fails, and in any 
decent sort of season, we expect to have water 
