For my next article in The Shed magazine, I have been designing and building this water wheel
The whole thing is about 1100mm high, and it can kick along at a fair rate of knots, even just with a hose as the water supply.
I’ve designed it to use either water weight (quantity, slow moving), as well as water velocity (smaller quantity, flowing at speed).
It has a square drive on one side of the shaft, so it can be used to do real work, and at some stage I’ll add some traditional gears to do just that.
No glue used in this project – it is all coach bolts. About 170 or so in all.
Filed under: Project, Techniques | Tagged: The Shed Magazine, water wheel |
Stu's Shed 
It’s pretty bad that you have to bolt your spokes on so your wife doesn’t pinch them for wooden spoons in the kitchen 😉
Nice work. It’s fun to revisit forgotten technologies and discover how effective they can be, isn’t it. It’s also a sobering reminder of how reliant our world has become on others making stuff for us, when you look at the skills required to make things like that and realise it was once commonplace, but no more.
Guess I’ll need to dig out my box of Popular Mechanics from the 50’s and find a project that doesn’t use power tools, now that you’ve made me feel guilty!
And here’s what you can do with a proper size water wheel:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-21/mike-tyler27s–power-of-two3a-solar-and-hydro/5607740
Like it! Don’t think my little one would generate much, but that is a really satisfying way to become self-sufficient.