ALL PARTS SHOW BELOW HAVE BEEN CHANGED, USE THE INFO BELOW FOR REFERENCE ONLY. THE PARTS KIT IS SIMILAR BUT NOT THE SAME.
INSTALLATION NOTES:
As far as parts, you will need two 25 foot pieces of #6 Welding
Wire, one red and one black (or Yellow). This will go inside the
pole tower and can withstand lots of twisting and turning motion.
This type of wire can be bought at any welding supply store found
in your local yellow pages.
You will also need to purchase a 20' piece* of schedule #40 -1.5"
water pipe available at any Hardware or Plumbing type store. I
would recommend you have them cut the pipe at 14 feet. This will
give you 3 feet cemented into the ground and a nice tall 11 foot
tall mast that will not require messy looking guy wires.
11 feet is just high enough to easily be worked on with an 8 foot
painters ladder and is tall enough so kids can't get cut. While
you are at the hardware store buy a post hole digger and a few
bags of premixed "post hole" cement too. You may want
to use quick setting cement, or add some to your concrete which
will make it set within 15 minutes. You will need a level to get
the pipe straight. Look at the picture above and to the right
showing how the welding wire is to be run, up the pole to the
PMA and back around under the cement and up out of the ground
plus extra. The run of wire going to you disconnect panel/battery
can be done with type UF direct burial wire. 10 gauge 4 conductor
is fairly cheap. Double the wires up for maximum amperage. Twist
the black and the white together to become the positive and then
the green and copper together for the negative. A 250 foot box
is about $120.00 at the Home Depot - You can run this wire under
ground without conduit since Type UF wire is water proof. Finally
connect this wire to your battery/disconnect with the proper fusing/breaker.
You are basically done with the hard part. What you do with your
battery power is up to you.
*Note: IF you do use a 20 foot pipe it will need guys wires
or need to be at least Schedule #80 to resist bending when a storm
hits!!!
For a step by step installation guide with photos CLICK HERE http://www.springtower.com/installation.html
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q. How do you get the electricity down from the generator
as it changes direction to face the wind? Would the wire get twisted
without sliprings?
A. Our turbines do not have a tail that flips to the left
or right in high winds so how can the wires get twisted??? This
is a 70 year old misconception left over from a bygone era when
ALL wind turbines made in the 1930's would turn in one direction
for high wind protection. IF you simply use rubber welding wire
(made for twisting, abrasion and tension resistance) and tension
the welding wire at hard points like a rubber band it will never
be able to make enough turns to get twisted before it desperately
wants to release it's build up tension energy and literally unwind
itself in the pole. Welcome to the the new millennium and evolution
from old ideas.
A wind turbine manufacture that brags about his brushless PMA's
and then admits to the terrible dependability of carbon brushed
generators AND then puts a set of carbon brushes in his sliprings
is at odds with his own philosophy to say the least! Carbon
brushes wear out, sooner or later.
More On "No Slip Rings" - Our advice on slip
rings is to use heavy rubber coated welding cable and don't worry
about twisted wire. Twisted wires in the pole are an overrated
problem in small wind turbines. Heavy rubber welding cable tends
to simply unwind when it is under tension and the wind turbine
head favorers turning in the opposite direction to effect unwinding.
Welding cable has also magical qualities when it comes to taking
continuous twisting and has incredible abrasion resistance when
rubbing inside the pipe. Welding cable will last for about 50
years (Not even slip rings will last 50 years)
NO OTHER TYPE OF WIRE HAS ALL THESE QUALITIES
EXCEPT WELDING CABLE! USE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
In all our testing slip rings eventually failed and required maintenance
while over 100 small test turbines equipped with #6 rubber welding
cable operated with an exceptional 100% dependability factor for
over 14 years now and counting. 100% reliability
Yet more on the - "NO SLIP RINGS"
Topic
If you have #6 rubber welding cables and put them in a wind turbine
tower pipe you can only turn them about 20 or 30 times in any
one direction before they get tight. Interestingly enough at this
point they react like a giant Rubber-Band and try to turn the
other way trying to unwind themselves. A simple rubber tension
system was born from welding cable! It's very reliable, cheap
and never fails. No moving or rubbing parts to fail. Welding cable
is specially made cable designed to endure endless abrasion, twisting,
bending and turning motions offering at least half a century of
service life or more. Especially if it's in a dark pipe with no
UV shining on it. It should last a life time.
WATER IN CEMENTED TOWER PIPES
Drill a small 1/4'' drain hole at the ground level of the pipe.
Fill the pipe with a few cups of liquid cement (water mixed with
Portland cement powder only, NO sand or rock!!!) When this mixture
comes out of your 1/4" drill hole then chase it with a gallon
of clear water. If it cogs during pouring use a piece of wire
until it flows clear water. DONE! - Water in pipe problem gone!!!!!!!!!!!
