Origins

The US Air Force built the airstrip during the Second World War. They recognised that water would be a problem and sank 20 bores looking for water, but found none.

John Douglas (later CEO at the Royal Aero Club at Jandakot) was President of the Narrogin Flying Club from about 1968 - 73. Amongst his skills, he is a water diviner. He put down 2 bores - the existing one and another in the hollow east of the Flying Club. Both struck water.

Ken's Story

In 1988, NGC member Ken Hodgkinson became tired of carting water ballast in for his Astir CS, VH- GDC, so he decided to try and resurrect the bore, which had long fallen into disuse.

The bore had a 8 HP Robin petrol engine and pump on it, which was far too powerful for the job because due to the nature of the soil - very clayish - the water flows into the hole quite slowly.

Clearly a slow acting pump was the way to go.

Ken built a windmill from scrap. He installed a belt driven small centrifugal pump but, despite several upgrades of power, it only produced a trickle.

More power was clearly not the answer.

The breakthrough finally came when Ken realised that the centrifugal pump was simply the wrong equipment for the job and a positive displacement pump would be better.

Ken replaced the centrifugal pump with a positive displacement windmill pump that was installed at the bottom of the bore hole. It was powered by the wind turbine via a car differential and an ingenious system of cranks and pulleys and a vertical actuating rod to produce the high torque, slow speed, reciprocating drive that it required. Eureka!!, water flowed at a slow but steady rate from the bore.

Ken then cleaned up the old Robin engine, got it going and sold it.

With that money and some from the Club, a metal tank was purchased and enough poly pipe to renew a pipe through the culvert under the airstrip (near the metal tank).

The pipe runs as far as the workshop, with taps at the T Hangars, near the BBQ and at the workshop.

A pipe was also run up to an old concrete tank on the hill that was part of the original farm that the airstrip was built on, to provide additional storage capacity. However, it leaked.

Major efforts were made to seal the tank by lining it with plastic, but they failed. Gallons of a special bitumastic sealer were bought, the tank was cleaned out and the sealer applied to the inside.  However, this was only partially successful and the tank only ever got about 600mm of water in it. Moral - you can't win them all.

In 1990, Ken gave up gliding and his visits to the club are now rare. He is remembered by a WAGA trophy awarded each year for the most state records broken by a WA gliding club, and for the NGC bore.

Mike Sutton then became interested in the project and took over completely when Ken retired.

Mike's Story

When I took custody of the Bore Pump from Ken Hodgkinson, I could see that a lot of work and thought had been put into the project. The system, although ungainly looking, worked well.

After all, the only draw off water was at the weekend, and thousands of litres of water were not required to feed livestock!

However, it had its problems.

For example, shortly after taking over, an excessive leakage at the pump compensator caused corrosion. I was sent some neoprene buckets for the compensator, but while they stopped the leakage, they also stopped the vertical mill rod which operates the pump from moving! As the turbine was trying to operate the pump, the pitman buckled. So it was back to leather "buckets".

The mill rod itself is a half-inch PVC pipe. In its forty-foot length there are four joins. These are joined with couplings glued and then fixed with split pins. Now and then one of the joints separates; the glue doesn't hold and the split pins rot away!

Another problem was the car axle used to transfer rotary motion from the turbine to linear motion for the pitman mill rod. It was a good, simple piece of equipment.

However, unfortunately, it had to be rotated ninety degrees to achieve this aim. This puts is at a disadvantage for lubrication. There also seemed to be an area of resistance at one point in the differential.

The outriggers, which undoubtedly gave more power, were unstable in strong winds and caused failures in the top bearing. Also, the original twelve-gallon drum impellers were rusting and their fasteners to the crosspieces were coming out.

One day over there, Barry Briggs, (I think that is his name), an ultra-light pilot friend of Dennis Gorton, said he thought the impellers should overlap the centre shaft. Thinking of this I went to the library for a book on wind power. There were about two pages on a wind turbine called a Servonius wind turbine, which was as Barry Briggs had described. A man called Savonius had designed and built these vertical axis wind turbines in the 1920's. They are used in remote places for pumping water and driving small generators today.

One day, Arthur Tooker suggested to me that we bring the whole system, with its twelve-gallon drum turbine, up to working order. When I explained to him the design advantages of the tree tier Servonious wind turbine, he agreed that we should go along these lines. Another visit to the Public Library and a good book on wind power was borrowed. This contained the terminology and suggestions for dimensions.

With club finances I bought some sheets of ColourBond from a local salvage store. These were 1300 x 900 mm and so these dimensions dictated the size of the turbine! The height is 1800 mm and the diameter is 900 mm. With the extra height the supporting frame height had to be increased, and guy wires attached for stability. These guy wires came from a coil of old telephone supplied by Avon Furphy.

When we dismantled the old system we found that the bottom bearing had collapsed, so better system had to be used.

A phone call to John Bowles and the answer was given. The front wheel hub of a car was the best option. A phone call to Avon Furphy and the hub was available!

Initially we installed the system with the turbine using the belt and pulley to turn the car axle. This proved that the system worked but for more efficiency we changed to chain drive.

Unfortunately this extra efficiency had a near disastrous effect. During strong winds mid-week the differential jammed and the bolts holding the axle to its frame sheared and the brackets buckled!

Another visit to Avon Furphy, but instead of a car axle, we came away with an old fertiliser spreader. This proved to be ideal. We connected the pitman to the drive wheel of the fertiliser spreader, which in effect ran the fertiliser spreader backwards.

However, another problem appeared - when the mill rod was on the power stroke and lifting water the chain slackened on one side and tended to fall off its sprocket.

This required the chain to be lengthened and fitted with a tensioner - off a bicycle.

With the chain and sprocket wheels exposed, we finally put a cover over these items.

The mill rod continued to give trouble with breakages due to the split pins rusting out. Now we replace these with stainless steel pins.

A more recent breakage of the mill rod coupling caused concern when we discovered that a 15-mm coupling would not fit. Scouting around plumbing stores proved futile, but in Bunnings I discovered the fittings I wanted, which turned out to be made for electrical conduit.

In order to prevent escape of wind and improve efficiency, the joins where the end plates and impellers touched were sealed with an Araldite like compound.

So by a process of break it and fix it the system evolved.

Here are a few photos of the new turbine under construction.

At present the recovery of water into the bore is a little slow and the pump can often be operating dry. It may be necessary to recycle some water back into the bore in order to keep the pump wet.

With the old system one down and up stroke of the mill rod required twelve turns of the turbine. With the present system thirty-five turns are required. However, with the three-tier system the turbine will rotate irrespective of wind direction and five knots of wind speed is all that is required.

Mike Sutton