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Welcome to Wind Chasers.
 We got some
great shots of deer this week with our trail cam. There is a bit of
a wildlife trail in our field that goes from our property through
several adjoining properties. That day, there was a small heard of
ten deer traveling through our field. We've seen all kinds of
animals traveling this route. Deer, coyotes, and lot's of wild
turkeys are frequent visitors. Who say's there are no animals living
around the wind turbines!
We have started keeping track of the animals that we spot on a
regular basis on our farm and to date we have seen lot's of deer,
coyotes, turkeys, two different types of hawks, owls, bald eagles,
turkey vultures, and many other birds that we have never seen
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Morgan is taking life easy as it snows and snows and snows
outside our earthship! Everyone's loving it here in paradise!
We finally got internet at the new location so we will be able to
update the web site more often. We will be posting lot's of pictures
and new stuff over the next few weeks, so check back often!
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Attention!
We are finally moving into
our earthship! We are pretty excited!
Actually, Craig has been
living at the site since the first part of May this year. First in
our motorhome, and then finally, into the house in October! He has
been working hard to get the house to the point where we can live in
it and we have, just in the past couple of weeks, begun to move our
animals to the site. When the last two dogs are ready to go, that's
when I get to move in. It's far from finished at this point, but all
the essentials are up and running. We are very pleased with the
performance of the house so far. It is working perfectly!
Anyway, with this move, comes
a new address and telephone number. Our e-mail address will stay the
same for now, but that too will be changing in the near future. We
will keep you informed of that change as well when the time comes.
Here's our new contact
information:
Craig and Connie Cook
227, 7th Concession ENR
RR#1, Clear Creek,
Ontario,
Canada, N0E 1C0
Our new phone number is:
519-586-7122
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| Hugh Piggott's 2011 wind turbine plans, Imperial edition. |
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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 $26.00 Canadian each and $3.00 shipping to
anywhere in Canada.
We accept PayPal
For more information, please check out our products page.
Contact us
Product 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. His 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 !
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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.
Please note that we
will be working on a new place for our turbine building get-togethers next
summer (2013) and we are hoping to be able to start again next fall. We
really miss our drop-in turbine building sessions. We have met a lot of
wonderful people over the years and hope to meet many more in the future.
Watch this page for updates!
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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!
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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! |
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Earthship started, only two years to go.
The fun has begun!
More pics on earthship page (Breaking
ground) |
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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! |
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Jake, get your hands off our new blades!
Jake looking sheepish after getting caught! Nice try! |
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Electric
Car Video
Turbine
Video
Check out the video page for more videos!
| 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! |
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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!
     
     
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!)
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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.
Product page
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