The Old Folks Home

[Alaskan]

@getaclue wow! very frustrating. for you!


Me sooooooooooo tired!!!!


Went from

To

In just two days.


Notice the awesome stealth-ness of it?? The green box is our new trash holder. Notice the tiny bits of coop hiding behind the trash holder and all the brush? Not too bad huh? The spouse noticed....but there was no screaming.

 

[Alaskan]

Trying to piece all of the wood bits is DIFFICULT!! It is very much like putting together a puzzle where 1/3 of the pieces are either missing or are from different puzzles!!!

 

[getaclue]

perchie, I like the looks of the bottom one best, but I wonder how difficult it would be to build a frame, and cage the blades (like a fan), so they don't kill so many birds.

 

[vehve]

Getaclu, is that really a huge problem? Also, the vertical ones take up less flight space, so the shape itself would lessen the problem. I ike the bottom one the best too.

 

[perchie.girl]

perchie, I like the looks of the bottom one best, but I wonder how difficult it would be to build a frame, and cage the blades (like a fan), so they don't kill so many birds.

Getaclu, is that really a huge problem? Also, the vertical ones take up less flight space, so the shape itself would lessen the problem. I ike the bottom one the best too.

I had never heard of birds being damaged by Wind turbines.... You see they are very visible and do make noise and best off all they create wind turbulence around them.... Birds do NOT fly blindly. I just wondered how these stories get passed around as truth. So I just looked up an article on it.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm

Bottom line yes they do kill birds but NOt on the levels you might think..... Less than one tenth of a percent of Accidental Bird deaths are attributed to wind turbines. That is .001 percent.

The list started with Cats being the worst offender with hundreds of millions of birds per year.... and ended with wind turbines with a maximum of 40,000. The chart of it is at the bottom of the article i posted.

and Like Felix says a home windmill especially the vertical ones is going to be even less offensive. The one my neighbor has is about four feet in diameter and about twenty feet tall including its mounting tower. I believe he uses its electricity to power his Well pump. Our wells here can be in excess of 500 feet deep much too deep for a standard windmill.

deb

 

[vehve]

Deb, that was sort of what I imagined, I haven't seen very many stupid birds, and it's sort of hard to miss the turbines. (I mean see them, the object here being that we probably want the birds to miss the turbines).

Another thing I think is cool, are the generators that utilize the movement of water. They look less offensive too, but they probably wreak havoc on aquatic life.

 

[getaclue]

deb, Thanks for the link. The information I had was about the Altamont Pass energy farm, but it left out the other information, such as sheer numbers, the design being outdated, etc.

 

[Sylviaanne]

All my deer hunting is picking up road kill that wanders into my yard after getting hit in front of my house. Well, I've gotten 3 that way at least.
After the first one I started looking at road kill everywhere.

We live right off highway 65 and only twice in 8 years have we had a deer close enough for us to grab off the road. The first one had been hit by a vehicle and it hadn't died. When we called the sheriff, they wanted to know if we hit it. Dummies, yeah, we hit it and then called you to come put it down. Right!

We asked about taking it for the meat but they told us they take it to have it butchered and packed up for the food bank. I guess they don't do that for the deer that they don't know how long it has been dead because the meat lays there and goes to waste. There is a tiger sanctuary in our area and they seem to be getting some of the deer but they don't get it all. We called the conservation people and asked about getting the deer off the road, told them it was for my dogs. We still would have had to get a license, not a hunting license and we were told we couldn't sell the horns, hooves or hide. Now, tell me, what am I going to do with a pile of horns, hooves and a dozen or so hides? So, we haven't done it.

 

[perchie.girl]

deb, Thanks for the link. The information I had was about the Altamont Pass energy farm, but it left out the other information, such as sheer numbers, the design being outdated, etc.

You are welcome.... Here is the wind farm I did work for it was first established by several investment groups and our contract was with one... Since then its been pulled together as a single windfarm... I believe.

Tehachapi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Pass_Wind_Farm


At the time we were solving issues with building wind turbines that were endemic to the industry.... human safety. Originally when one of those blades would fail they would shoot off the journal and mandrel holding them to the machine. Any object they would hit got skewered.... Like cars.

then there was the efficiency deal Originally windmills were designed to obtain their energy by trailing the wind. Or the wind coming in behind past the tower then heading into the blades. this left a dead space behind the tower so when the blade passed by it would wobble toward the tower .... this lead to harmonic failure which can be devistating.

Our windmills had tails that turned the windmill in a passive manner to face the wind. Removing the buffeting caused by dead space behind the tower. Also our blades were one of the first that were mass produced that had a feathering ability. Most windmills are most efficient in thirty mile per hour winds. too fast and the blades fail Or small harmonics destroy the Gearing mechanism that runs the generator. Too slow and the generator doesnt work. So Ours was set up with a computer that would stop the windmills if the speed got too fast. The feathering mechanism would turn the blades straight on to the wind to stop rotation and a breaking mechanism would further lock it down to prevent it from turning.

Because we designed a method for using composite material for the blades themselves..... IF they failed the Airfoil would collapse in a wad of fiber....

Most exciting thing I got to work on for that project was the drive shaft converting the windmill motion to the gear box. The bearings for it had to be installed with a fork lift because it took three to four men to lift them.

deb

 

[chickadoodles]

I

windmills. That shows an attempt at progress.

Thanks Cynthia for sharing your beautiful view of that canyon and the windmills do show that some are attempting to do more for cleaner energy.

Cynthia I did get some wheat and turkey delight and so much more at the feed store. I just planted some wheat.

Thanks