A home's garden hose can provide electricity

[mike444]

I assume the Op was posted for those of us with their own wells.

[Pirate88179]

Interesting topic.  You have had some very intelligent input to your idea.  I like a combination of some of the ideas posted here.  Place a small turbine in you house or apartment water line near the input and use that to pump water from a tank on the ground, to a tank on a raised platform. (not the roof)  The water in these tanks could be continually recycled except for evaporation losses but, you would also get some rain input so the volume would not decrease that much.

Now, as the other fellows pointed out, you could not afford to run the pump all the time but, when you use water in the home for regular purposes, a volume of water would be transferred from the ground to the raised tank. Add a few solar cells to run a dc back-up pump and possible a 3rd power source of some kind, possibly wind, and now you might be able to use these 3 sources to keep the raised tank nearly full and run your turbine in an almost consistent manner.

It still might not be cost-effective yet but it might be a bit closer.

Always good to think.

Bill

[DreamThinkBuild]

I would eliminate the water over the house, insurance is already too expensive and picky.

I would get a large round pool, use a high power electric snow blower motor (run with solar panels during the day) with a stirrer blades and create a stationary whirlpool. The mass of the spinning water would turn a bladed VAWT generator which would be placed in the center of the vortex where the flow is greatest. You would need a lot of water, the more mass the better.

If you ever made a whirlpool in a pool as a kid you would know how much force going against the spinning water is.

[skywriter]

    If we could get the tank on the roof to fill up with rain water that the Sun lifted during the day and deposited in the tank at night then it would be a good idea.  Someone actually holds a patent on creating a permanent location for a cyclonic storm.  The currents passing through turbines on their way towards a permanently maintained low pressure center in  the middle of the turbines.  Possible use for Stonehendge.  The giant red spot is thought to be a permanent hurricane on that planet.  A hurricane is like a giant conveyor belt that uses stored up heat in the ocean to make the air rise where it is cooled becomes more dense and falls back to Earth.  The difference being that momentum builds in the vertical circulation with one side of the wheel having heavy rain falling connected to the other side of the wheel that has warm light vapor rising.  The bottom of the wheel sweeping across the heat scource and the top of the wheel sweeping across the cold scource.  A natural stirling engine.

Okay then, how about this idea. I live in the SF bay area, where the weather patterns exactly match your idea, Sparks, at least in the cold months. We get most of  our rain from november to May, and it comes at night, after it gets dark, and it rains like blue blazes. With a roof tank that was very spread out to distribute the weight, it would certainly power a turbine, at least for half the year.

I was also thinking about having a receiving tank for the water, since with the rain the garden certainly doesn't need it. If the tank had an open pipe outlet running up to the roof tank, overflow would enter the tank to fall and power the turbine again. Or so I'm thinking.

This is my first post, by the way, Hi everyone.