Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Building A water wheel and waterfalls

Hey folks. I am gathering componenets to build a water wheel . One of my lakes(A) has a constant stream of water flowing through it most of the time. Usually at least 10 months sometimes 12 months with the amount of runoff that it has. I want to build a water wheel that is about 12-12 feet in diameter that will operate a diaphram pump and pump water up hill about 12-14 feet verticle height to another lake(B) (about 100ft away ) that is filled from a lesser amount of runoff. I then want to re-route my spillway from the higher pond(B) and allow the water from that pond to flow back into the original larger lower pond(A). I am planning on allowing the spillway to flow over some very large flat 10,000 to 20,000lb rocks. The water will fall about 12-14 feet cascading a couple of times to add back additional oxygen to the lower pond(A). The water falls will be about 1/4 mile from where the pumping will take place. Any suggestions on the homemade diaphram pump or the water wheel? We have tried a small water falls draininf a smaller pond (C) into pond (B) down about 12 feet of drop going over 50-ton of large rip/rap and when it rains the little copper nose bluegill trie to swin up the rapids of the falls and the big old bass just go wild feeding on the bait fish and hanfing out in the oxygen rich water. Richey in north Alabama.

SOunds Awsome!! cant wait to see it get started..

are you makeing everything your self? Or do youhave some other help

That's a project I'd like to see documented with pictures! That sounds really neat.

Neat project. Would love to see the pics.

Overshot, (where the water comes in from the top), wheels are more powerful than undershot, (where the wheel is driven from current passing underneath), but are still relatively inefficient.

Have you considered a submerged turbine style? Most folks want the sex appeal of an overshot wheel, which depends on having enough water volume to fill the buckets, AND having sufficient fall to impart weight to the wheel.

On a 12' wheel, you'll probably need to bring the water in at a height of 13' or so.

Sounds like a cool, but very labor intensive project. Would love to see the pics also.

richey a water wheel sounds like a neat project, if you build it keep us updated with photo's.
If your looking to just pump water to another pond a hydraulic ramp pump might be an easier way to go.
http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/Equip/ram.htm

I would think that more engineering would be involved than most people think. Sprkplug us right about wheels fed from the top are more powerful than just passing beneath. Once the buckets fill with water, you have gravity to assist turning the wheel by the weight of the water. I would think the size of the wheel, size of each individual bucket would be determined by the amount/volume of water flow. I'd seek out a water wheel manufacturer and see what size wheel they recommend for XX gph of water flow. Google water wheel builders/manufactures to contact them.

Thanks for the input. I need all the help I can get. Here are the rules. I have bet the locals that I can build the water wheel from junk from a scrap yard. I will horse trade for every thing except concrete and paint and perhaps some welding rods. The unit has to look and perform as if store bought. i.e. have that factory finish to it but perform as it should.

I need more information on the function of a ram type pump. I had thought of building a diaphram pump from an old tractor tire with a short stroke crank shaft and a simple check valve. Any ideas. The ancient folks in Egypt want have anything on us when we get this thing finished.( I hope) Any and all constructive and destructive criticism is appreciated. At the present time I have the following parts.

#1 18 in structural H beams to support the water wheel
#2 Bearning assembly and center hub wheel to weld the spokes to.
#3 Drive Axle with 20 to 1 planatery gear multiplier.
#4 Right Angle gear assemble to transfer power to the drive line
#5 Brake assembly to lock down the water wheel
#6 Part of the flume assemblly to feed the water wheel
#7 Part of the steel to build the buckets out of for the wheel itself
#8 Midpoint bearing for supporting the end of the drive line that will somehow connect to the pump assembly.

Need ???? #1 Determine What type pump is most efficient
A. diaphram pump from old tractor tire
B. ram pump
#2 Best way to construct pump from junk yard components.

#3 Bestway and most efficient way to construct spokes for wheel and size/shape/number of buckets. Also if I should add a lot of mass to the wheel to make it heavy like a big flywheel. Any mechanical engineers out there?
Anyone else out there crazy??????????

A very cool project. I would suggest trying to locate a copy of the book "The young miller and millwright's guide", by Oliver Evans. It was originally published in the late 1700's, but has been reprinted many times since. Evans was THE authority on water wheels, and their succesful application in grist mills. And a superb engineer for his time.

I have a copy, but it's currently on loan to a relative. Try Ebay, and online used book stores. Beware, the older prints are pricey, try to find a recent version.

I like your idea of the diaphragm pumps, what about using bigger (20 x10.00x10) lawnmower tires? they are usually 2 ply, which makes them quite flexible. I am envisioning a walking beam type of arrangement, with a pump on each end, allowing for a more constant flow of water.

Not to mention the coolness factor, of watching all the moving parts...

Thanks for the information on the book. you should see the big rocks I am collecting to build the water falls out of. several of them are just massive. We have a 36,000 lb track hoe and we like to have never moved them out of the lake and up the hill. I am going to take measurements of them and try to calculate their weights. I want to lay the top one as level as I can and try to spread the water over the entire 10 15 feet of width when we have a big rain. that should put some oxygen in the water when falls about 12 to 14 feet or more onto the rock at the bottom if i decide to lay rock for the water to land on. I want to mazimize the sound of the water.

Been thinking about the pump today and the water wheel. Sometimes I have just too much water. I mean once I had 3 feet of water above the top of a 700 ft long dam . my big emergency spillway was overboard and both by spillway pipes were full. Plus I have some acreage that I use for free board and it was very full. That was when the hurricane hit the gulf coast and it only lasted about 30 minutes. What a surge.

I was standing on the dam when the water started rising and barely made it across and to some trees to hold on to before it started to go down. I nearly go swept away into Short Creek and on to the Tennessee River. I was quite scared. It happened in a mater of less than 3 minutes. Never has happened before or since.

had a guy from iowa tell me that a large combine tire would make a good diaphram pump. He said a radial with good flexible sidewalls. I believe 18.5 x 33 not sure. I havent figured out how to configure the crankshaft yet or how long a stroke . Of course the horse power of the water wheel will determine that . Must find the millwrights books next before I do anything else. thanks

I used to work with a guy that built a ram pump to water his garden that was uphill from a creek. It seemed impossible that something like that could work. If I remember it would take in so much water and a portion of that was shot up through a hose.

And also for my pond but never carried through, I bought plans from a guy in Ireland to build a three bladed wind turbine fastened to a brake drum generator that you wound an armature and placed rare earth magnets around the inside edge of the drum housing to produce electricity for a pond aerator. So good luck on your project, I can identify with that.

John thanks for the input. I need all the help I can get. I have told several folks here about my boulder collection and my water wheel parts collection includings some guys that are mechanical engineers retired from NASA and so far I seem to get a really wild look from everyone. What gave me the idea of the water falls came out of a trip to Bolivia as we went up into the Andes and I was told how the Incas uses terraces to carry water hundreds of miles. I remembered studying this in school. After I got home I was looking at the trees on the farm and notices that they had grown out of terraces as to at some point in time was part of a cotton farm back in the early 1900 and probably had been terraced after the dust bowl. I started following the terraces and then got a topo map and realized I could use them to move water from Pond C and B and over a water fall to pond A. Then I got to thinking about all the wasted water going out the horizontal spillway of pond A and I thought we need to catch some of this and move it back to pond B. Well it sounds good anyway. Do you have any info on the ram pump????? Richey in Alabama

Has anyone in the pond boss team build a large water falls between ponds for adding glamor to their pond along with a lot of oxygen?

Richey this might give you a start on your ram pump.
http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm

I also got to thinking, depending on how much drop you had from the high water source and how much volume, then piping to the lowest pond, maybe you could do something like St. Petersburg, Russia and Rome, Italy did for water fountains. Collect water at the high level for pressure at a lower lever. In the 1800's Alaska water hydraulic gold mining was done by taking a water stream up high and piping it through large pipes and chocking it off at the bottom in smaller diameter pipes which created very high pressures that they could wash away the sides of mountains looking for gold. I could see at your lower level pond having a high spraying fountain for aeration for free after the piping expense.

Sounds like a pretty cool project.

If you go with a water wheel, make it as light weight as possible. Over or Under would work, but I think Over would utilize your water resources a bit more efficiently, but at what cost?. At what point do you release the water from the wheel? When it is no longer useful for the desired output, and this would be Torque. You are not trying to store energy in the wheel for an up and coming event, like a flywheel on a punch press. The heavier it is, the more your water has to work to keep it in motion making it less efficient. If you go with gearing on the output of the water wheel to produce the desired speed (HP) to run your pump, go with spur gears in a light oil bath. I would also enclose the wheel from the elements. But that is just me!

Good luck on your project! I hope to see pictures when available.

John good suggestion. my highest pond C has the smallest water shed. My lowest pond and largest pond(about 12 acres has the largest water shed whith continous water through it usually year in and year out since it was constructed in 1993. the middle pond B has a modest water shed and that is the one I want to pump water up to from the largest pond. I fill pond D or the duck pond about 2-3 acres which sits just behind the big pond with an 8 inch pipe that runs through the botton of the big lake from about 200 feet out and under the dam and through a regular 8 inch cast iron gate valve down 14 feet in the bottom of the duck pond. other than rainfall the duck pond has very little run off. Should have used that pipe and a tee to constuct some way with another valve to connect to a ram pump or turbine wheel to produce energy. Wasnt even thinking at the time. have about 30 feet or more of head . Would be a lot of work and expense now to rework to access but is do something that could be done but I had to drain the duck pond again.

Jkb Thanks for the information. I was planning on using the complete axle assebly and differential from a large earth mover with plantery gears located at the wheel. I whated to use the massive bearings hub and drum along with the wheel rim to build the water wheel to. I thought that I could remove the 85-140 gear oil from the planatery gears and add a light mineral oil. Then I would do the same thing for the ring gear and pinion and use the output from the differential to drive my crank shaft which would be connected to a mid point bearing. The assembly I have came from a 400 H.P. Military Surply Clark 290M A4-wheel drive articulating tractor. You can view the tractor at my website at www.clark 290m.com. Everything is matched and I dont think the waterwheel will produce enough h.p. to break anything. I know there will be some frictional loss but I will have a 19.5 to 1 gear multiplier to start with. What is your thought on this????? I was going to mount the complete axle assembly upside down on a couple pieces of 18 inch wide flange beam at 50 lb per foot runnning horizontal with the vertical supports concreted into the ground. Did spend two hours last night studying Ram Pumps. Quite simple and seems very inexpensive to construct to move water. Might be cheaper to build two or three of these out of larger pipe???? Use water wheel to produce something else?

Great project.
I built an 8’ undershot spiral water wheel pump for my creek. I was hoping that I could supply a small amount of water to a small watering hole about 100’ away and about 3’ head. I built it out of all oak lumber and it is heavy. It was a great project and very cool to watch as the water pumped out of the center axel. It had plenty of volume for what I was wanting. The problem was when I connected the hose it was like putting a break on it. I did not have enough current to over come the drag of the back pressure. More than likely it has major design flaws on my end not the principle behind the spiral pump. I shelved that project for another day and yes the little watering hole is drying up slowly.

Wow glad to hear from you. Been kinda holding back until I do more research. I think I am going to build the water falls first. I am going to Rome Georgia to Berry collage to look at a 45 ft water wheel in the next few weeks and then to Alexandera , Alabama to look at a 35 ft water wheel. There is one about a mile from my sons home that I am going to try and get permission to visit in Lee County near Opelika , Alabama. I want to take a close look at some of the ones that ran factories many years ago. How large is the creek that you put your oak spiral water wheel pump into???? Do you have flow the year round? My 8 acrea lake is down abut 3 feet and I want to be able to pump water out of the 12 acre lake up about 12- 15 feet verticle to help keep the 8 acre lake full. richey

http://www.riferam.com/rams/ramspec.html

but maybe other sellers have cheaper prices