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Published by 
The Rural Publishing Co. 
333 W. 30th Street 
New York 
The Rural New-Yorker 
The Business Farmer's Paper 
Weekly, One Dollar Per Year 
Postpaid 
Single Copies, Five Cents 
Vol. LXXIV 
NEW YORK, JANUARY 30, 1915 
No. 4292 
MORE ABOUT ELECTRIC POWER. 
SMALL WHEELS ; COST OF FIXTURES. 
Water-power from Faucet. 
1 HAVE been much interested in your article on 
electric lightting. I have a %-inch pipe bringing 
water into my kitchen, with a pressure of 55 
pounds. This runs a motor washing machine in 
a very satisfactory manner. Would there be power 
enough to run a small dynamo with storage battery, to 
light an ordinary house? n. o. w. 
"Pennsylvania. 
By a strange coincidence, the above question from 
a reader of The It. N.-Y., is answered in the same 
mail, by another reader. Here is the story of a boy 
on the farm who not only harnessed a half-inch stream 
of water, but actually made a dynamo, by which this 
tiny stream is turned into electric light. Thus: 
I read The It. N.-Y. 
with great interest. It is 
one of many farm papers 
that come to my father’s 
farm, but I must say I 
look for its coming more 
than any of the others. 
The articles on farmers’ 
electric light plants are 
the most inteestiug to 
me, but in reading them 
over it seems to me that 
you leave out all farms 
that do not have a river 
o r stream r u n ning 
through them. Our farm 
does not have such a 
stream, but we do have 
piped water in the house 
and barn. By the use of 
this, and a little work, I 
have fitted up a small 
electric plant of my own 
that has done away with 
oil lights in my father’s 
barn. I will try to ex¬ 
plain it for the benefit of 
farmers like myself (I 
am 18). The water has 
a pressure of GO pounds 
or over. It comes to the 
barn in a half-inch pipe. 
The generator is a five- 
nmgnet telephone mag¬ 
neto. I re-wound it with 
heavy wire, 
was placed 
handle was. The wheel 
is made from a disk of 
wood one-half inch thick 
and eight inches in di¬ 
ameter. I placed 48 
small V-shaped buckets, 
made from old tin cans 
on this. The water is fed 
to the wheel through two 
small pipes, one over¬ 
shot, the other under¬ 
shot. The lights are 
small—six volt s, six 
candle-power each, but 
they take the place of oil 
lamps, for they can be 
placed just where wanted. 
In all I have eight 
lights in the barn. I can 
use but four of these at 
a time, as the generator 
is not large enough to 
light them all at a time. 
When it comes chore¬ 
time, I just turn on a 
valve and the outfit is 
ready for business. I 
never light a light unless 
it is necessary, thus 
when I want a light, I 
do not have to shut off 
another to have enough 
juice. In cost, this out¬ 
fit could not be con¬ 
sidered, as the whole 
thing cost me just $6. I 
got the generator for a 
dollar, second-hand. The 
lights were the only 
things that cost. They 
are not carbon lights. 
They are tungsten. I 
bought this kind because 
I did not have enough 
current, and I wanted to 
get all the light possible. 
I think that anyone with 
water in liis home should have such an outfit, as it saves 
its cost in one month in the safety it gives the farmer. 
W. E. W. 
teaches him mathematics that his school-ma’am 
couldn’t hammer into his head with a rolling pin; 
and it rouses his inventive faculty. Making a water¬ 
wheel with a piece of wood and a lot of tin cans is 
a mechanical feat worth talking about; but it isn’t 
anything to the mathematical feat of taking an old 
telephone ringer apart and re-winding it for an 
electric-light dynamo. Yet this boy has done it, and 
I could name a dozen boys in my acquaintance who 
could do the same thing. Give your boy electricity 
for a playmate and teacher, and he won’t play 
hookey, or want to leave the farm. 
We don’t usually consider that there is much 
power for practical purposes in a half-inch stream 
of water; yet. in the Far West, where they are 
able to secure a fall of upwards of 1,000 feet, they 
The wheel 
where the 
usual oil lamp, without danger or trouble. If there 
is plenty of water to waste, it should be run without 
storage battery; if not, a small battery might be 
installed. 
Harnessing a Small Stream. 
I have a small stream and a pond about 200 feet 
from the house. We would like about 80 lamps, but 
probably never more than 15 at once, and usually 
about six. What size dynamo would this require and 
how much power to run it? IIow do you determine 
the amount of powe’’ to be had from a stream of water? 
Who could I get to come and look at things and give 
me an estimate of cost? f. b. ii. 
New York. 
A one-kilowatt, 110-volt, compound-wound dynamo 
would give 50 lights of 20 candle-power each; it 
would require two horse-power to run it. One 
water horse-power would give half this amount of 
machine would probably 
be found more satisfac¬ 
tory, and would take 
very little more power 
unless pushed to its full 
load. To determine the 
amount of power to be 
had from a stream, first 
determine how m a n y 
cubic feet of water the 
stream gives a minute. 
This can be done by 
a homemade 
already de- 
The Ii. N.-Y. 
the following 
New York. 
We would like to print the name of this young 
Edison, but he modestly closes his letter thus: 
“I’lease do not print my name.” He answers D. O. 
AV.’s question, from actual practice, which is better 
than theory. Furthermore, he answers another ques¬ 
tion, a question bigger even than how can we have 
electric light on the farm: How can we keep the 
boy on the farm? The answer is, give him the use 
of a half-inch stream of water to play with, and 
introduce him to electricity. As we have said before, 
there is something about electricity for the boy 
that is more natural than going swimming. It 
niE GREAT AMERICAN BIRD—PLYMOUTH ROCK. Fig. 32. 
develop many hundred horse-power in a single ma¬ 
chine, by the use of a half-inch nozzle against the 
so-called Peltoh wheel—a big wheel with buckets 
built like clam shells, much like that described 
above. W. E. W. has constructed a crude Pelton 
wheel. Actually, in a half-inch stream, with GO 
pounds effective nozzle pressure, there is nearly one 
horse-power of energy. Probably one-half or one- 
third of this could he used in a small turbine, such 
as a motor washing machine. It would drive a 
dynamo, just as easily as it would drive the wash¬ 
ing machine. A small 200-watt dynamo, such as is 
to be had cheaply in the market, would furnish 
enough light for the average farm home, on a small 
scale—would light a farmhouse better than the 
means of 
weir, as 
scribed in 
Then use 
formula: 
II. I*, equals number 
of cubic feet per minute 
times fall, in feet, times 
G2.5 pounds, divided by 
33,000. 
Thus, say a stream 
delivers 100 cubic feet 
per minute, and the fall 
is 10 feet. How many 
horse-power will this 
stream develop? Thus: 
100 (cu. ft. per min.) 
times ten (head) times 
G2.5 (weight of one gal¬ 
lon of water) equals 
62,500 pounds of water 
a minute. Divide 62,- 
500 by 33,000 (one II. 
I'.), which gives 1.0 
horse-power. T h r e e- 
fourths of this power 
should be available in 
the a verage turbine 
water wheel. Any civil 
engineer could give an 
estimate on power and 
cost of plant 
Power from Four-inch 
Stream. 
I would like to know 
how much horse-power a 
four-inch pipe with a 50- 
foot drop would give; 
and if a rotary pump 
would not give more 
power than a turbine 
wheel. I should like to 
have enough power for a 
milking machine and a 
separator, besides lights. 
E. P. T. 
Massachusetts. 
A four-inch stream. 
50 foot head, would de¬ 
liver about 200 cubic feet of water per minute. 
Theoretically this would develop 28 water horse¬ 
power. The resistance of the flume would cut this 
power down, depending on the distance the water 
was carried. Allowing 50% loss from this cause (as 
a 4-inch pipe is small), would leave 14 horse-power. 
To avoid much of this loss use a larger flume, still 
retaining the four-inch nozzle. A turbine wheel 
would deliver about 10 horse-power of this. Such 
a plant would furnish electricity for a five-kilowatt 
generator, which would provide a surplus over light¬ 
ing and dairy power. Turbine water wheels and 
rotary pumps are constructed on the same principle, 
hut a rotary pump would probably not be so efficient 
for power unless having a special vent. f. i. a. 
