GREEN                                                

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French River Land Company's Website!

Previous Pictures Web Page

I posted too many photographs on the website. It was becoming very slow to load. I moved some of the previously posted photographs here.

My recent hunting trip to Montana aka: bagging the big horned hydro generator. I just got back from Montana. I was out hunting big horned hydro generators. I bagged four 30,000 pounders. I would stuff them and put them over my mantle piece but I do not think my hearth is strong enough!!! Two of them are being installed at our Indian River HEP. Enjoy!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/frenchriverland/MissoulaMT?authkey=v571LsJtfdk <<<< click on this hyperlink
 

The beast exposed!!! One of these runners and gate cases we installed at Pioneer Hydro in Ware. MA. A second was installed at Tannery Pond in Winchendon, MA.

Mary Remington deciding if the old Bradway is worth rebuilding. Poor Mary, instead of going to the movies, she gets to see defunct hydroplants, in the basements of old cotton mills!!! Actually, she really enjoys the trips. This is a Bradway Waterwheel and Governor, both the turbine and governor, were designed by Charlie Bradway. This site has 54 feet of head. (see additional photos at end of Bradway webpage)

Who would know I have advanced engineering degrees from Lehigh University and WPI!!

End of a long day!! Celeste and Will using the bed frame of Woronoco Hydro's, two megawatt, GE Generator for a couch. We had just finished commissioning the No. 2 generator.

Will is cutting the 36 inch main support beam for the new stoplog structure at Woronoco Hydro. Here he is 11 years old and this is an enormous I-beam! A second beam is leaning on the back of the truck.

This is just before I told Josh that it was a real bad idea to have the rope wrapped around his hand. I was just a wee bit concerned that me, the crane, the I-beam and Josh were going to be pulled down the rabbit hole!!! This is an enormous beam for the little cherry picker to manipulate. On these jobs, I run the crane. Note the yellow beam clamp, on the center of the beam above the hood of the truck. You can see the crane hook is attached to the beam clamp. The little crane has the entire weight of the beam hanging off it. Davis is inside hooking up a chainfall to transfer the load to.

Here, my best friend and business partner, Davis Hobbs, has control of the business end of the beam, with a three ton aluminium body chainfall. You can see, way down below, that we have already lowered one of these beasts into place. The upper end of the beam is still attached to the crane hook. This is a deep forebay. The invert is 34 feet below the gate house floor.

Celesty in action!! Here, Celeste is lifting up the recently, rebuilt, No. 2, rear, gatecase at Woronoco Hydro. Notice all the guys watching Celeste run the chainfall. That's my little girl always in the thick of any heavy rigging!!

One Hydrolec H11-H about to go out the powerhouse door

Will makes the rigging job look easy!! The machine weighs about 8500 pounds. This is the ragged limit for this little cherry picker.

We are swinging it onto the truck and are about to load it onto the trailer.

Ready to go down the road!

Please see:

June 7th, 2009, What I do on the weekends?:

RemovingTanneryPondHydrolecTurbine-authkey=Gv1sRgCLH2x-T9z_ujVw#5344664439560937842 <<<<click on this hyperlink to find out!!!

May 31st, 2009. Added Trump Turbine Catalouge.

Celesty in action!! She is removing the slate switchgear from the No.4 powerhouse at Lower Thorndike.

French River Land's Tannery Pond Site in Winchendon, MA, Will working on governor controls and new disc brake.

Will and Celesty suiting up to dive at our Pepperell Power Plant. We had lost a stay vane in the No.2 unit. It actually dropped through the 8000 pound propellor while it was rotating at 300 RPM!!! Mike Desrouche and Celesty dove for the stay vane. Will floated on the surface as in a backup capacity. Afterwards, Celesty swam up all three elbow draft tubes and inspected the condition of the 1918 concrete.

Mike and Celesty have just finished recovering the stay vane. Poor Will has been floating on the surface for the last hour!!!

Here is the recovered stay vane. Note how big it is compared to the tailgate. Note the gouge marks where the Leffel "B-2" runner smacked it at 300 RPM.

Here is the Leffel "B-2" gatecase. Notice the missing guide vane. We needed to get to the lower ring of bolts in order to reinstall the missing guide vane. We jack hammered out the machinery grout. We removed the bed ring bolts. We raised the gate case with three chain cum-a-longs. When we picked the gate case up, three more bolts, that were broken, dropped out of their holes. Note the giant "B-2" runner inside the gatecase. During the dive, we lowered a halogen work light into the draft tube. It was on a ground fault protected circuit. When Celesty and Mike swam up the center draft tube, it was all lit up from the halogen light!!

Here, I am polishing the 66,000 volt bushings with Colonite. There are nine of these insulating bushings that make up our air break switch at our Pepperell Station. The switch is obsolete and the high voltage stingers had been eroded by high voltage arcing. No problem!!!! Warren made new copper stingers and contacts for the switch!!! We had National Grid pull the 66,000 volt fused disconnects and install grounds on the transmission primaries so I could work safely in the substation.

The 2 megawatt, No. 3 unit at Woronoco needed its main bearing replaced. We purchased a gorgeous Cooper split bearing. In order to install it, we needed to machine the main shaft. Instead of disassembling the unit, we elected to machine it in place. We took the steady rest off our big Poreba lathe to support the shaft. We took the base of our little bench miller and used it for a cross slide. We hot wired the generator controls and energized the generator to turn as a motor. We turned the shaft to the diameter needed for the new Cooper bearing.

Warren Fay, Ken Smith and Celesty are changing out the Ropac mechanical seal on Collins No. One unit. They have installed the draft tube gate. You can see it blocking the Chicopee River behind Ken's back. We had a diver swim up the draft tube and seal the edges of the gate as we pumped the throat down. They have removed the top half of the throat. You can see the piece on the floor to the left. They are getting ready to pull the bronze, four bladed, runner out.

Davis, Celesty and Ian making concrete repairs. They have made a one sided form. Davis has Hilti glued  threaded studs to the face of the concrete. He used the studs to secure the form . They are mixing up an epoxy coating called Sika Pro Plus. It is very viscous and the drill motor barely mixes it.

Will and I found this beautiful Cincinnati Radial Arm Drill. We bought it for $ 500.00. You can not buy a Hilti Hammer Drill for $500.00!!! We hired Three Bs Towing to bring it home for us. I cleaned up the column and the ways. We have been using it ever since.

Here, we are trying to stuff the 10 1/2 foot tall drill through a 10 foot opening. Celesty is removing the top motor to make the drill shorter. We finally got it through the door!!

Celeste tugging the 72 inch radial arm drill into the shop. We mounted a snatch block on an eyebolt inserted into the shop floor. The crane cable is hooked through the block and back to the drill. As Celeste carefully controls the cable tension, the drill is being tugged into the shop.

Celesty and Will removing the pinch bolts on the No. 2 Unit's flywheel. This station was originally a stand alone for the paper mill. As such, the units were governed to produce 60 cycle power. The flywheel was used to produce rotational inertia. This smoothed out the speed changes from any minor load additions or rejections and gave the governor time to react.

June 10th, 2009, added:

Design of the runner of a Kaplan turbine for small hydroelectric power plants by Timo Flaspöhler

and

Kaplan Design by Marko Kogovsek

Will and the four supervisor dogs, taking a hydro break, on the Swift River, in Bondsville, MA. Tsar is flanking Will. King Tut is following. He is boxed in between Queen Cleo and Miss Zoey!

I had been searching for a 60 inch Bullard for several years. I could afford neither the $60,000 price tag, that they were going for, nor the $10,000 trucking charge. Finally I found this one, on e-bay, two towns over from the shop for $3500 that included the flag and digital read out!!! Here Will, Celesty and Ronnie have jacked it up and placed it onto caterpillar machinery rollers in order to ship it back to the shop. We were looking for a service manual. The folks who are supplying parts for Bullards told us to look on the cross slide for a 5 digit serial number that would help them select what manual to send to us. I looked and found only a three digit number. We told the number to the factory rep. He called back and told us our Bullard had left the factory in August of 1902!!! It was the oldest Bullard that he knew of that was still being used in a commercial operation. I was very pleased to get it. Will did put on his steel toed boots after this photo was taken.

April 11th, 2009, added scanned textbook, Hydraulic Motors by M. Bresse as translated by F. A. Mahan, July 1869. Also added links to Part I and Part II of the 1880 US Census, Water Powers of the United States. Got up at 5:00 AM cleaned both sides of River Road of all trash from bridge to abandoned house. Got Collin's trash rake and swept beer bottles and trash from sun turtle's little pond.

April 2nd, 2009, added scanned textbook, Hydraulic Turbines by Victor Gelpke and A. H. Van Cleve

March 29th, 2009, added scanned text book, Theory of Turbines by De Volson Wood, Graphics of Water Wheels by William Fox and Standard for Hydraulic Turbine and Generator Shaft Couplings and Shaft Runout Tolerances.

March 23rd, 2009, added Characteristics of Modern Turbines- Chester Larner.

Celesty in action!!!! She is at the bottom of the Chinese gate case at Brockway Mills. She is moving one of the 75 ton porta-power cylinders. You can see the remains of the Chinese volute case, that needed to be cut out, in order to install the 500 KW, Ossberger Turbine in place. Chris gave me the Dong Fang for cash and a promise to assist him with the concrete removal. The only place to insert the rectangular draft tube was to hammer out a 10 foot wide by 12 foot long by 15 foot deep hole in front of the volute case and breaking out into the roof of the elbow draft tube. We used 30 pound rivet busters to remove the yardage. It took 6 weeks of back breaking work. This plant is currently for sale. Chris has purchased property in Montseratt. He wants to drill obliquely towards the volcano and install several megawatts of vulcan-thermal, steam cycle power!! This is a beautiful plant and has been running superbly!!! He is asking $ 850,000 for the plant. I think it is a steal. If you have a serious interest, please call Chris at: 1-603-499-2350.

Celesty is inspecting the No. One turbine runner for damage at Pepperell Hydro. Note the chunk of missing runner blade she has discovered. She is holding her hand over the missing piece.

Celesty and Will in the ruins of Appleton Mills in Lowell, MA. Will is sitting on the endbell of the horizontal pressure case. Celesty is straddling one of the cylinder gate operating shafts. Please see the following "You Tube Video" of this site when it was restored in the 1980s by Dave and Luke Wright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efZfa8w7VNg <<< please click

March 18th, 2009, Added Operation and Maintenance of Hydro-Generators

March 11th, 2009, added brochure, Craig Ridgway, "Perfection" Water-Wheel and Shaft Couplings for Hydroelectric Units

March 10th, 2009, added brochure, Headgates by S. Morgan Smith Company

March 8th, 2009, added Christiana, Jolly, Trump and 1902 Lombard Catalouges.

March 5th 2009, added link a link to "Treatise Relative to the Testing of Water-Wheels and Machinery, with Various Other Matters Pertaining to Hydraulics" James Emerson, Holyoke Testing Flume, 1878.

March 3rd 2009, added three Lombard Catalouges, four articles on cavitation and links to the classic textbooks, Waterpower Engineering by Dan Mead and Hydraulic Turbines by Daugherty.

Celesty and I are lowering the Leffel, 39 Inch, B-2 runner into the No. 2 pressure flume. The new main shaft was created by "The Wizard",  on our 28 foot long, Poreba, roll, lathe.  Celesty and Mike had just used the 3000 ft-lb, hydraulic torque wrench to tighten the 1/2 coupling onto the top of the runner. We are standing on top of the Westinghouse generator flange that I carved from the carcass of the number two generator with the thermite bars.

Celesty, Ronnie Johnson and Chris Krueger rigging the Brockway Mills Rotor in anticipation of lowering it into the powerhouse hatch. Look at the size of the crane block compared to Chris' head!!

Here, Celesty is pushing the Brockway Mills synchronous generator stator into position. I am in the back corner operating two 5 ton chain cum-a-longs in series to take up the slack. The stator is hanging off the crane cable . The top of the boom is almost 200 feet above her and the cable is dropped down through three stories, of a concrete reinforced powerhouse.

!

A rare picture of Celesty, Will and Ronnie with the famous Mr. William Munch. Bill is a master electrician, hydro developer and owner of the Valatie Falls HEP. He learned about hydro development as a child. He worked with his father developing hydro stations in the 1930s and 1940s. I am always in awe of Bill Munch and see him as a living part of hydro history. By the way, he hates to have his photo taken!!!

Celesty and Will during the presentation of their WPI Major Qualifying Project (MQP). These gentlemen are their advisors, Professors Mingjiang Tao and Paul Mathisen. They designed a replacement dam for the Anasagunticook Lake Dam in Canton, ME. Celesty has graduated with a BS Degree in Civil Engineering. Will is graduating this Spring with a BS Degree in Civil Engineering.

Please see the following link to their paper:

Anasagunticook Lake Dam Replacement- C.Fay & W.Fay<<< click on link

Celesty torquing down the little bull gear bolts for the main driveshaft at Slater Mill Museun in Pawtucket, R.I. The Wizard is watching for movement of the blocks. This exhibit always had a severe vibration problem. This was partially caused by the replacement, main, bullgear located in the basement. When it was cast, it cooled in a slightly oblong shape.

Celesty is inspecting the No. 2 Unit, at the Lee Pelton Site, in November of 2004. She and Will removed the equipment. They bought the contents of the powerhouse for $ 1000. It was offered to them at the last moment in leau of giving it to the scrappers. It was amazing seeing the two of them, running 30 pound rivet busters, to pry these units out of solid concrete! We still have the three units. Ironically the third unit never ran!. The head losses in the 7000 foot long, 42 inch diameter penstock, with all three units running produced less power than with two units running!!!

Mike is scaling the inside of a draft tube whilst Celesty holds the halogen light for him. This is a really tall tube. Mike is about 18 feet above the tailwater. The tube is about 8 feet in diameter at the high side. We had him tied on with redundant safety belts and chains.

Celesty checking out the Lower Bristol site in April of 2005. She and Will almost bought the upper and lower sites. This powerhouse and its equipment have since been obliterated from the face of the earth. What a shame.

February 5th, 2009 added Sparhawk Mills

Celesty supervising the pick, of the Brockway Mill's, second generator rotor. The first generator lost its bearings and destroyed its rotor and iron core. Chris purchased this generator. He dropped both rotors off at the shop. We pressed both shafts off the rotors. We turned down the old shaft and pressed it back into the new rotor. We did this so the generator shaft and coupling would match up to the existing turbine. Note the newly glyptoled salient pole pieces.

Celesty, Davis and Mike rigging in the 26,000 pound, solid steel, Dong Fang synchronous, salient pole, rotor. Notice Celesty's mitten stabilizing the rotor shaft while Davis and Mike remove the cribbing. This is typical!!! We can not work in or near the water unless it is 10 below zero!! Celesty is always in the thick of it!!! At least she was smart enough to wear her Carhart thermal coveralls. See the third to the last photo, in the machine shop sidebar, to see how large this rotor really is and to see it flying through the powerhouse!!!

A second view of Celesty and Mike picking the Dong Fang rotor. Celeste is tossing those 70 pound, southern yellow pine, timber cribs, around like they were match sticks!! Between working with us building hydroelectric plants, for the last 12 years, and graduating with a Civil Engineering Degree from WPI, she knows more about hydropower engineering then most 50 year old consultants!!

December 20th, 2008 added our adventures rebuilding the Valley Paper Company's Smith Kaplan in 1993.

December 12th, 2008 added a link to the CORPS's Water Hammer Program for penstock transients

November 26th, 2008 added Carl Weidner's Design of an Overshot Waterwheel( an exquisite paper)

November 24th, 2008 added barrel stave bearing repair webpage

November 1st, 2008 repaired Bradway page and added Golden Pond Repair Photos.

Will Fay is using a megohmeter to check the primaries for short circuits. We found out that one of the high voltage primaries had short circuited to ground inside the aluminium tube that you can see the wires passing into. This tube was designed to keep the high pressure oil inside the turbine and the water from entering the turbine. It turned out to be a complicated design. We had to destroy it in order to reverse engineer it. It was filled with epoxy. The wires were interrupted by brass cylinders that had been drilled from either end that created blind holes with brass in between. The wires were inserted from either end and silver soldered in place. They were then inserted in the aluminium cylinder and it was filled with epoxy. This elaborate scheme was to prevent the high pressure oil from wicking up the interstices of the cooper wire.

October 6th, 2008. Added Bradway Turbine webpage.

September 30, 2008: I spent a lot of time finishing up our saga about removing the turbines at Livermore Falls, NH. You may thoroughly enjoy perusing the web page:

http://frenchriverland.com/livermore_falls.htm

Celesty jacking the Golden Pond, Hydrolec, Kaplan, Hub down, with a 30 ton, hollow, core ram.

Mary Remington and Will Fay offloading one of four, Rodney Hunt, Hi Test, gatecases. These units are part of a quadraplex, dual camelback unit similar to Jim Beesha's units at Mechanicville, N.Y.

Celesty and Will getting ready to dive on the forebay at Woronoco HEP. Sand had built up in front of the west rack and the trash rake would not descend to the sill. They cleaned out the sand.

Winter on the Westfield River. Celeste and Ronnie Johnson installing stoplogs in order to drain Woronoco Hydro. Note the main beam is the same one Will is seen cutting in a following photo.

April 119th, 2009, started scanning "Feasibility Studies for Small Scale Hydropower Additions, A Guide Manual, US Army CORPS of Engineers.

April 17th, 2009, finished Gubin. Reduced price on Montana Generators.

April 16th, 2009, scanned more pages into Gubin and added Snow's Improved Water Wheel Governor, 1845.

April 14th, 2009, did taxes, wished my Mom Happy 91st Birthday. Partially scanned and added Draft Tubes of Hydro Electric Stations, M. F. Gubin. Need to look at Pepperell saddles and band installation.

Celesty Fay constructing her first dam at Mill Road. She is two years old here!!! Note the giant baloney curl looped over her left shoulder.

King Tut, "The Supervisor"!! This guy barks out orders like a dog!!

Celesty, Will and I just purchased this Niles Boring Mill with a 120 inch diameter table. We paid $5000.00 for it. We are setting it up in the old turbine hall in Building 9 in the Ware Mill Complex, Ware, MA. This is a magnificent machine tool and I could not see it going to the scrappers. It is loaded on three flatbeds!!!

Note worn, circular way that the table rotates on. It has worn two concentric ridges. We are contemplating installing 980 1/2 inch by two inch long hardened dowl pins in this depression in order to rebuild the way.

This is the table. Note the main shaft stem is bolted to the base of the table with a flange. We will remove the shaft and turn it true in our big Poreba Roll Lathe. We will make a new main bronze bushing using a chunk of bronze, Durabar from Boston Gear.

No Picasso could compare with the beauty of this crosshead!!!

This is one enormous chicken wing!!!! lol

Men at work!! We have finally started on Indian River HEP. Here my guys are using a 50 ton railroad jack to pry the General Electric, 400 KW, 200 RPM, salient pole generator out of the floor. We spent two days jack hammering it out of the floor.

There is nothing like a 30 pound demolition hammer to move old concrete. This generator will be reconditioned and installed at Celesty's and Will's new powerhouse.

This is a really big lathe. I am in the process of purchasing it. Only I would see the intrinsic beauty and value in this machine!! I am having the ways scraped and it will go back into commercial operation to extend its 120 year life cycle. I am grateful the scrappers did not take it!! We will use it to re-machine crown plates, throats and runners!!!

September 28th, 2009, progress report on Indian River:

We have removed the front gatecase cover, the front gate case, one of the two runners and one of the cameback humps.

This view is looking into the front of the pressure case. The runner shaft had broken into two pieces. You can see the rear camel hump and the end of the broken shaft sticking out. The rope prevents you from falling down the draft tube 12 feet into the tailrace.

December 2nd, 2009, we just purchased a Whitcomb and Blaisdell metal planer. Here it has just arrived from N.J. and we need to remove it from the truck. See the following Picasa Album to see how we did it!!!!http://picasaweb.google.com/frenchriverland/Planer?authkey=Gv1sRgCK_brdOGroXsbg# <<< click here!!

We have cut the pressure casing away to expose the Morgan Smith cylinder gate turbine. We need to remove the bed bolts and slide the unit outside. I am not scrapping this turbine. It can go to a museum or be reused on a low budget project. The runners and castings are in great shape. It was putting out 300 kW on 24 feet of head at 200 rpm until it was turned off in 1994.

Here is the 1888 GE Generator. It is going into dead storage at a friend's factory. Here we realized the crane would not pick the generator up. We removed the excitor rotor, excitor stator and bearing caps. We were then able to lift it up.

Indian River progress update:

http://picasaweb.google.com/frenchriverland/InduanRiverOct21st2009# <<click

Our beautiful and mischievous Mary Remington, checking out the optical transit, to go surveying with Will. Mary is very bright and a quick learner. She has been helping us out with FERC licensing issues and survey projects.

We blew the generator stator at Golden Pond Hydro. Will and John Remington went up and removed it. They hauled it back on the trailer. A friend drove up and looked at the trailer. She asked me what that large metal pig was doing in my driveway? I will take that impression of my turbine pig to hydro heaven !!!!! lol!!

Here is something you do not see everyday! Here is the table for our Niles Boring Mill being turned by the table of an even larger Niles Boring Mill. We needed to have the large diameter annular bearing refinished. The Niles has a unique design feature. It has a gear driven wedge that is located beneath the bearing spindle. For small pieces, the table is lifted up with the wedge. For very large pieces, the table can be dropped down and lightly rested on the annular bearing to support the outer edge of the table. The folks at Montaque Machine in Turners Falls, MA turned our table bearing to a 60 finish at Warren's request.