3 Blade PVC Pipe Bicycle Wheel Hub Windspinner

3 Blade Vertical PVC Pipe Bicycle Front Wheel Hub Windspinner, a vertical windmill made from easily accessable parts. Easy Good practice for fustrated windpower enthusiasts whom are interested in homegrown wind turbines. It is an easy first windmill. With no load, it starts up in low breezes and winds and really goes at 10 mph and up winds. Provides a visual home weather station for wind speed. (Best watched in HD) The HD Movie was taken in very very slight intermittent breeze. It could easily be used to measure wind speed with a bicycle speedometer attached to it, although if you know and see several wind speeds all you have to to is look at it to know the approximate wind speed. A vertical wind mill can use wind from all directions and also use wind gusts that a horizontal wind spinner
can't. A 3 bladed vertical design is more balanced that a 2 bladed design and can catch wind from more angles and different directions, A vertical wind spinner never has to orient itself to the wind. The wind spinner has been mounted on the edge of a parking lot in a trailer park under a car port for over a year, thus it has limited space application for persons in confined regulated living conditions having an interest in wind energy. It is silent. It is a cheap and uncomplicated build, although disappointing because it currently doesnt produce electricity. The pipe was found in a ditch it is a broken off cable marker hit by a riding lawn mower or tractor. The PVC 3"
or 4" pipe was cut using a Dremil type rotary tool with cutoff wheel from Harbor Freight Tools. The blades are mounted to the bicycle wheel hub using small bolts that fit thru the spoke mount holes of the wheel hub and homemade C shaped brackets made from K&S .064" thick malleable silver metal from K&S metals hardware store display, model shop display, or the internet. The rotary tool & cutoff wheel was used to cut the C shaped blade brackets. A drill was used to make the bolt holes in the C shaped K&S metal brackets and the PVC blades. A vice was used to bend the C shaped brackets. The bolt holes for the brackets and blades where drilled together as a bracket to blade sandwich so that the alignment for each blade and its bracket was perfect. The Vertical wind spinner is mounted on 3/8" galvanized plumbing pipe. The quick release bicycle wheel hub is mounted to the plumbing pipes by drilling a hole thru a 3/8 pipe end cap and putting the threaded end of the quick release skewer thru the hole and fastening it there with a 5mm metric nut. Electrical generation was considered for the design, bicycle hub generators and bicycle friction generators but
all where eliminated so far, the wheel hubs because of lack of good fastening methods and stiff turning. Low rpm electrical generators they are designed to operate at about 40-50 rpm and generate about 3+ watts. Ungeared practicle wind generators are usually designed for low rpm power generation. I bought a bicycle hub generator and sent it back, it was expensive and hard to turn, lots of resistance and the hub generator wheel axles available in the USA, dont seem to have enough length for me to work with, to feel that I would have secured it enough, and solar lights seem to be cheaper that a bicycle wheel hub generator with less problems, IE less working moving wearing parts and liability. The bicycle friction generators where ruled against because they are documented to have the bearings wear out and melt down with too much use and they are designed for higher rpm than wheel hub generators, and capture was problematic compared to solar devices such as solar collectors, solar battery chargers, solar lights and small solar fans for ventilating boat covers or cars or sheds already on the market. Before building the 3 Blade PVC Pipe Bicycle Wheel Hub Windspinner I considered much more elaborate expensive VAWTs and have cut from roadside scrap pvc pipe some PVC PIPE HAWT single blades of the http://www.reuk.co.uk/PVC-Wind-Turbine-Blades.htm type but again I have yet to come up with an economical generator motor to fly them with and they do take up more space and may make more noise and have more liability?
As this is a bicycle enthusiast type windmill here are some bicycle safety politics

For bicycle frame Safety Issues
concerning C shaped forwardly open bicycle frame rear dropouts & POSSIBILITIES OF REAR WHEEL BICYCLE FRAME SEPERATION during use,

Please see Public Comment Petition "DROPS"
aimed at The US Consumer Product Safety Comission
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/DROPS/

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• VAWT
• HAWT
• wind
• energy
• windmill
• wind power
• turbine

[ohallock3]

Three blades is the minimum, to catch wind from all directions & provide quiet, balanced, safe spinning. Larger 12" wide blades can be made from 24" dia PVC pipe. Use Bicycle wheel hubs w/ gears as bearings & to drive a chain? Use a higher tower to capture more wind ? The project tests all direction wind Harvest, w/ Vertical PVC pipe blades, a central support bearing, & plumbing pipe support common to wind turbine towers. ADD WindART artistic optical effects?

[javaxsqft]

Don't let your wife hold the camera. She's doing it wrong!

[1crazyfocker]

@ohallock3 i like your build, but not true, three blades is not the "minimum, to catch wind from all directions....." there is a lot of 2 bladed VAWT that have some of the best efficacy, just wanted to point that out. but good video.

[ronzilla3000]

awsome and creative..

[doug2877]

That is a sweet and simple design, think I will try to replicate it. Thanks for sharing

[TheTwistedGypsy]

actually 2 is all thats needed, google savonius vawt

[maxey83112]

dude i love ur comment

[maxey83112]

lol thats some funny shit, dont let your wife hold it, shes holding it wrong lol thats awsome

[frogmanvc]

for wind power to be viable,you need a constant 8 mph or higher outside of your home or else,don't bother!

[davidrrrd]

add more blades or bigger blades