Wind Chasers

Dec 25  2011

Home About Us Turbine Construction Product page Energy Conservation Contact Us Links Turbine Adventures Saturdays News YouTube Video's Earthship Workshops Old Stuff Fun things to do

 

Welcome to Wind Chasers.

Check out Jim & Lynn's earthship on the Earthship page

This is the view looking east from the beach at Port Burwell along some of the Lake Erie shoreline. Beautiful !

 

They're Here!
Hugh Piggott's 2011 wind turbine plans, Imperial edition.

 We now have available Hugh Piggott's latest axial flux turbine plans. The new 2011 edition "Wind Turbine Recipe book" is a 65 page manual with step by step instructions on building an axial flux alternator, including blade carving and metal works. Included are plans to build a 2', 3', 4', 5', 6', and a 7' version. There is truly a turbine size for everyone! All measurements in the new plans are in Imperial. (inches and feet)

 The plans are available at $29.00 Canadian each which includes shipping to anywhere in Canada.

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For more information, please check out our products page.

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These are some recent pictures of our earthship. Our friend, Roger, is a landscaper and has access to bobcats and other cool equipment for moving stuff around. He brought the toys to the house and scraped the floor smooth for us and brought in all of the gravel that we need under the slab. Hi kids, Carlee and Jessie were big helpers in this endeavor!

We have since then put the sill plates in place on the front and back wall to attach the roof in the spring as soon as the weather breaks. Can't wait !

 

This site has been constructed to give people information about home built wind turbines, energy conservation and more. The turbine we are currently running ,is a twelve foot diameter, homebuilt axial flux turbine designed by Hugh Piggott. This turbine was put up three summers ago, after running the ten foot axial flux for a year. This has been a fabulous turbine! It makes way more power than we need. We use the extra power to heat our domestic hot water.

Since installing our first turbine in January, 2004, we have been very busy. Our home has become somewhat of a landmark in the area. We have had people from all over southern Ontario coming by to see the turbine. Most of these people have been very interested in building a turbine of their own. This made us think that we should have people come to the house to build turbines in a workshop setting with other people. This idea was very well received by everyone since most were somewhat leery about doing this on their own without any help.

Since we first opened our home to helping people build their own wind turbines in 2005, we have assisted in the building of approximately forty turbines. Not all of them are up and running yet, but hopefully they will be soon! New people are coming here every month to start on their adventure in the crazy, and very addictive, art of wind turbine building.

The following pages have lots of information about turbine construction, designing a home power system to suit your needs and lots of things you can do to dramatically reduce your energy consumption in your home without having to go to extreme measures or spending huge amounts of money.

 

Happy new year everyone ! We hope everyone had a great time over the holidays and that you were able to relax a little and spend some good times with friends and family.

We have been very busy here during the past year working on our earthship and occasionally working on turbines. Our time seems to get used up very quickly nowadays and keeping this web site updated seems to far down on the "to do" list. We are hoping to be able to devote more time to updating the site to keep it interesting. So check back often to, hopefully, see some new stuff !

 

Attention!

We have decided that we need to devote more time this year to building our house. We are retiring in less than two years and we need to have the house livable by that time. We will not be having our regular Saturday sessions or any of our one day workshops for the next couple of years. We will still be available to help people by e-mail or over the phone or by a visit to our workshop by appointment only. If you would like to come by, please phone us in advance so that you won't be disappointed! Our phone number is 519-842-7255. We are hoping that once we retire and we are in our new location, that we will be able to have more workshops, more frequently.

 

 
We recently had a visit from Peter and his wife and two of Peter's shop students who are building a wind turbine in their class. Peter was one of the students who came to build a wind turbine with the group from The University of Western Ontario a couple of years ago. He now has a class of his own and is passing on the turbine passion!

 

On November 15th, we had a group of student's from the University of Waterloo engineering department come to visit our earthship. It was a great visit and there was a lot of enthusiasm from the students. Our dogs, Gus and Abby were very popular with the students as well as you can see in the group photo, just before Gus gives Sarah a big sloppy kiss!
                                                                                EARTHSHIP 101
Earthship started, only two years to go.

The fun has begun!

More pics on earthship page (Breaking ground)

We have had a bunch of new people start their turbine projects here lately. Everyone is very enthusiastic about wind energy! The wave is getting bigger!

Here's Wayne and Ginny and Al and Paul working on their turbines.  Everything looks great so far!

Jake, get your hands off our new blades!

Jake looking sheepish after getting caught! Nice try!

 

Electric Car Video

Turbine Video

Check out the video page for more videos!

 

Saturday Fun!
Craig and Pippa are putting the finishing touches on Pippa's turbine while Mike makes witty remarks about how they're not doing it right. Thanks for your input Mike! 

News!

Check out our new page "News" for news and information about happenings and upcoming events such as workshops.

Due to a great deal of interest from people who are unable to attend our weekly get-togethers here, we have decided to offer one day workshops here for people who live too far away to come here on a regular basis. For more information, check out our "News" page.

 

 

Check out the "Saturday's" page to see a really big turbine that Ben is working on!

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Since the turbine gang is getting quite large now, and it's nearly impossible to get everyone here at the same time to get a group picture, we decided to put thumbnails on of everyone instead. Our little group has now grown to about thirteen regulars and several others who just pop in occasionally to visit or to get a little help with something.

    (Check out our new section featuring turbine adventures from other people and places!)

                                                            

            If you are having problems locating the magnet discs for your turbine, we can get them for you. 

These disks have been laser cut and have the holes for the hub and bolts already cut out.

The  discs are 12" o.d. x 5/16" thick. 

The 12" discs are available at $30.00 each Canadian plus shipping.

We also have 14" discs available at $40.00 each Canadian plus shipping.

For more information, click on the products page below.

Contact us.

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