overshot wheel brands

Waterwheel Factory shares it"s knowledge about waterwheels and displays the inherent beauty of a moving waterwheel. Explore; water wheels in history; waterwheel calculations; waterwheels for energy, and gristmill restorations. Explore the many ways you can enjoy having your own waterwheel for landscape decoration or any project you may have in mind.Sit back, relax, and enjoy the many exciting photo’s and options we offer.

The Fitz waterwheel Company started in the summer of 1902. Its history leading up to this date started back in 1840 when Samuel Fitz operated the Hanover Foundry. This machine shop provided a number of services ranging from casting of segment and spur gears to metal parts needed in outfitting horse wagons in addition to building wooden waterwheels.

Around 1850, while running the Hanover factory, Samuel Fitz took over the Tuscarora Iron Works from Daniel Kennedy who had died at a young age. By this time wooden waterwheels were being made with metal hubs and axles. Some all metal waterwheels were also being made in England and finding their way to the United States. The advantage of having an "All Metal Waterwheel" was better machinery efficiency performance and simpler maintenance. Metal waterwheels also allowed the milling of products longer into the winter because the wheels would not freeze up. The performance increase was due to a curvilinear bucket (rounded shape). This type bucket reduced the turbulence of the water entering the bucket cavity, it also held the water longer in the buckets increasing the time duration of wheel cycle and had less water spillage. John Fitz (the son of Samuel) made his mark by being able to set up his machine shop to fabricate these metal water wheels using mass production processes. He had developed a standard metal bucket for a full range of wheel sizes, defined side panels to fixed sizes and an onsite assembly procedure that allowed most owners to assemble their new wheels with little assistance from a technician traveling in for site assembly. In looking at his machine shop work orders, even the total count and sizes of the rivets needed were detailed for each waterwheel order.

The Hanover factory and the Tuscarora Iron Works merged to form the I-X-L Water Wheel Company. Fitz had bought the name IXL from a turbine company he acquired around 1870 - 1880. If you look at it you see the phrase "I excel". By the late 1800"s the company was in full production of a full line of sizes of the world famous I-X-L Steel Overshot Water Wheel. In addition, the company continued to manufacture and restore all types of waterwheels. Fitz even manufactured wooden wheels for those clients who were committed to this type of wheel. The company continued to grow and on July 15, 1902 the company changed its name to the Fitz Water Wheel Company of Hanover, PA.

Fitz was a master when it came to marketing his products. He would produce and widely distribute his bulletins where he would present pictures of his waterwheels in many different locations doing a full assortment of jobs. He would go on page after page with countless letters of praise by their owners on how their new water wheel was the greatest investment they had made to their company. In almost all his advertising, you would see many pages describing why metal waterwheel was far superior to wooden wheels.

One of the main reasons for the success of the Fitz Water Wheel Company was not in its advertising but in the product itself. The first Fitz wooden wheels had a power efficiency of around 70%. Not bad for the time. With the introduction of the I-X-L Overshot Waterwheel, Fitz claimed over 90% efficiency. Fitz made sure he told the world about his great efficiency rating after a 136 page report was conducted in 1898 by the University of Wisconsin, Engineering School, and was posted to the public in 1913. By the late 1920"s the Fitz Water Wheel Company was the largest vertical waterwheel manufacturer in the world. Unlike turbines that lost their effectiveness with a small shift of water pressure, vertical waterwheels would continue to run in a low water volume situation. This made them ideal for factories and farms where water tables would vary widely during the year and product production was needed all year.

As the 1930"s passed and steam, diesel and gas engines took over the market place for power generation, Fitz continued to stay in business selling his wheels in the United States. By this time a good percentage of his business was in wheel restoration. He had also opened up the hydro market to sales in South American and in Europe.

Despite fewer new waterwheel sales, the company continued in business through the 1940"s by utilizing the machine tools it had to produce waterwheels, into making other machine parts. This can be seen by the number of orders placed by the air force in machine parts needed for aircraft. It also ventured in making portable turbine generators used during World War II.

To guess at a total number of wheels Fitz made is almost impossible. It would be safe to say over a few thousand just in the upper southeast of the US would be a good starting number. Chances are, when you run across a metal water wheel it will be a Fitz wheel. Fitz however, was not the only manufacturer of metal waterwheels. Campbell and Savage Water Wheel Company were two companies that shared a small percentage of metal waterwheels in this country. It is interesting to note that Campbell before starting his company worked for the Fitz Company for awhile.

In 1984 a research hobbyist, R.L. Omland wrote a series of four articles for the Society for the Preservation of Old Mills on the Fitz waterwheel and the mathematics behind the wheel. Some of his statements he made are represented here:

Because most Fitz wheels have a standard bucket design you can figure that for every 1 ft of width of the bucket you will be able to handle 2.7 cfs of water.

The number of buckets on a waterwheel is relative to the circumference of the wheel in feet, and that the spacing for buckets should be about 1 foot apart. One can use the following in determining the number of buckets (n) in a wheel. (n) = Pi * (D)iameter of the wheel. Once you know (n) you can determine the spacing (s) by using s = (pi*D)/n.

HorsePower at the shaft of a waterwheel can be determined by knowing the (D)iameter of the wheel, (Q)uanity of water in cfs [Cubic Feet/Second] by a constant of .1135 times the efficiency of the waterwheel. So HP = .1135 *Q*D*Eff

Years ago, in response to a customer"s request, I went looking for a reliable source of waterwheels for ornamental ponds and streams. You"ll love what I found!

Hand-crafted in Pennsylvania by a local Amish carpenter, these wooden waterwheels come complete with sealed wheel bearings and a cold-rolled steel axle. Screws and fasteners are yellow zinc coated. Yesteryear will come alive in your pond or stream when you find a creative way to include one of these beautiful turning waterwheels.

Please note that all of our Amish-made water wheels are overshoot wheels (the water is meant to flow into the wheel from the top just past the center point.)  We do not have any undershot wheels, designed for the water to turn the wheel as it flows beneath them.  We feel that an overshot wheel is more showy and traditional and are that for which the majority of our customers are looking.

Because of the inherent characteristics of wood, these waterwheels may include knots and other natural blemishes. Includes natural variations such that no two waterwheels will be identical.

The waterwheels rotate freely around a stationary axle, and as such are configured for decoration only, not for driving equipment. We recommend using with a 100gph pump for the best display. Wheel bearings are sealed and we do not recommend greasing, especially where they will be in contact with fish or other wildlife.

Water wheel design has evolved over time with some water wheels oriented vertically, some horizontally and some with elaborate pulleys and gears attached, but they are all designed to do the same function and that is too, “convert the linear motion of the moving water into a rotary motion which can be used to drive any piece of machinery connected to it via a rotating shaft”.

Early Waterwheel Design were quite primitive and simple machines consisting of a vertical wooden wheel with wooden blades or buckets fixed equally around their circumference all supported on a horizontal shaft with the force of the water flowing underneath it pushing the wheel in a tangential direction against the blades.

These vertical waterwheels were vastly superior to the earlier horizontal waterwheel design by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, because they could operate more efficiently translating the hydrokinetic energy of the moving water into mechanical power. Pulleys and gearing was then attached to the waterwheel which allowed a change in direction of a rotating shaft from horizontal to vertical in order to operate millstones, saw wood, crush ore, stamping and cutting etc.

Most Waterwheels also known as Watermills or simply Water Wheels, are vertically mounted wheels rotating about a horizontal axle, and these types of waterwheels are classified by the way in which the water is applied to the wheel, relative to the wheel’s axle. As you may expect, waterwheels are relatively large machines which rotate at low angular speeds, and have a low efficiency, due to losses by friction and the incomplete filling of the buckets, etc.

The action of the water pushing against the wheels buckets or paddles develops torque on the axle but by directing the water at these paddles and buckets from different positions on the wheel the speed of rotation and its efficiency can be improved. The two most common types of waterwheel design is the “undershot waterwheel” and the “overshot waterwheel”.

The Undershot Water Wheel Design, also known as a “stream wheel” was the most commonly used type of waterwheel designed by the ancient Greeks and Romans as it is the simplest, cheapest and easiest type of wheel to construct.

In this type of waterwheel design, the wheel is simply placed directly into a fast flowing river and supported from above. The motion of the water below creates a pushing action against the submerged paddles on the lower part of the wheel allowing it to rotate in one direction only relative to the direction of the flow of the water.

This type of waterwheel design is generally used in flat areas with no natural slope of the land or where the flow of water is sufficiently fast moving. Compared with the other waterwheel designs, this type of design is very inefficient, with as little as 20% of the waters potential energy being used to actually rotate the wheel. Also the waters energy is used only once to rotate the wheel, after which it flows away with the rest of the water.

Another disadvantage of the undershot water wheel is that it requires large quantities of water moving at speed. Therefore, undershot waterwheels are usually situated on the banks of rivers as smaller streams or brooks do not have enough potential energy in the moving water.

One way of improving the efficiency slightly of an undershot waterwheel is to divert a percentage off the water in the river along a narrow channel or duct so that 100% of the diverted water is used to rotate the wheel. In order to achieve this the undershot wheel has to be narrow and fit very accurately within the channel to prevent the water from escaping around the sides or by increasing either the number or size of the paddles.

The Overshot Water Wheel Design is the most common type of waterwheel design. The overshot waterwheel is more complicated in its construction and design than the previous undershot waterwheel as it uses buckets or small compartments to both catch and hold the water.

These buckets fill with water flowing onto the wheel through a penstock design above. The gravitational weight of the water in the full buckets causes the wheel to rotate around its central axis as the empty buckets on the other side of the wheel become lighter.

This type of water wheel uses gravity to improve output as well as the water itself, thus overshot waterwheels are much more efficient than undershot designs as almost all of the water and its weight is being used to produce output power. However as before, the waters energy is used only once to rotate the wheel, after which it flows away with the rest of the water.

Overshot waterwheels are suspended above a river or stream and are generally built on the sides of hills providing a water supply from above with a low head (the vertical distance between the water at the top and the river or stream below) of between 5-to-20 metres. A small dam or weir can be constructed and used to both channel and increase the speed of the water to the top of the wheel giving it more energy but it is the volume of water rather than its speed which helps rotate the wheel.

Generally, overshot waterwheels are built as large as possible to give the greatest possible head distance for the gravitational weight of the water to rotate the wheel. However, large diameter waterwheels are more complicated and expensive to construct due to the weight of the wheel and water.

When the individual buckets are filled with water, the gravitational weight of the water causes the wheel to rotate in the direction of the flow of water. As the angle of rotation gets nearer to the bottom of the wheel, the water inside the bucket empties out into the river or stream below, but the weight of the buckets rotating behind it causes the wheel to continue with its rotational speed.

Once the bucket is empty of water it continues around the rotating wheel until it gets back up to the top again ready to be filled with more water and the cycle repeats. One of the disadvantages of an overshot waterwheel design is that the water is only used once as it flows over the wheel.

The Pitchback Water Wheel Design is a variation on the previous overshot waterwheel as it also uses the gravitational weight of the water to help rotate the wheel, but it also uses the flow of the waste water below it to give an extra push. This type of waterwheel design uses a low head infeed system which provides the water near to the top of the wheel from a pentrough above.

Unlike the overshot waterwheel which channelled the water directly over the wheel causing it to rotate in the direction of the flow of the water, the pitchback waterwheel feeds the water vertically downwards through a funnel and into the bucket below causing the wheel to rotate in the opposite direction to the flow of the water above.

Just like the previous overshot waterwheel, the gravitational weight of the water in the buckets causes the wheel to rotate but in an anti-clockwise direction. As the angle of rotation nears the bottom of the wheel, the water trapped inside the buckets empties out below. As the empty bucket is attached to the wheel, it continues rotating with the wheel as before until it gets back up to the top again ready to be filled with more water and the cycle repeats.

The difference this time is that the waste water emptied out of the rotating bucket flows away in the direction of the rotating wheel (as it has nowhere else to go), similar to the undershot waterwheel principal. Thus the main advantage of the pitchback waterwheel is that it uses the energy of the water twice, once from above and once from below to rotate the wheel around its central axis.

The result is that the efficiency of the waterwheel design is greatly increased to over 80% of the waters energy as it is driven by both the gravitaional weight of the incoming water and by the force or pressure of water directed into the buckets from above, as well as the flow of the waste water below pushing against the buckets. The disadvantage though of an pitchback waterwheel is that it needs a slightly more complex water supply arrangement directly above the wheel with chutes and pentroughs.

The Breastshot Water Wheel Design is another vertically-mounted waterwheel design where the water enters the buckets about half way up at axle height, or just above it, and then flows out at the bottom in the direction of the wheels rotation. Generally, the breastshot waterwheel is used in situations were the head of water is insufficient to power an overshot or pitchback waterwheel design from above.

The disadvantage here is that the gravitational weight of the water is only used for about one quarter of the rotation unlike previously which was for half the rotation. To overcome this low head height, the waterwheels buckets are made wider to extract the required amount of potential energy from the water.

Breastshot waterwheels use about the same gravitational weight of the water to rotate the wheel but as the head height of the water is around half that of a typical overshot waterwheel, the buckets are a lot wider than previous waterwheel designs to increase the volume of the water caught in the buckets.

The disadvantage of this type of design is an increase in the width and weight of the water being carried by each bucket. As with the pitchback design, the breastshot wheel uses the energy of the water twice as the waterwheel is designed to sit in the water allowing the waste water to help in the rotation of the wheel as it flows away down stream.

Historically water wheels have been used for milling flour, cereals and other such mechanical tasks. But water wheels can also be used for the generation of electricity, called a Hydro Power system.

By connecting an electrical generator to the waterwheels rotating shaft, either directly or indirectly using drive belts and pulleys, waterwheels can be used to generate power continuously 24 hours a day unlike solar energy. If the waterwheel is designed correctly, a small or “micro” hydroelectric system can produce enough electricity to power lighting and/or electrical appliances in an average home.

Look for Water wheel Generators designed to produce its optimum output at relatively low speeds. For small projects, a small DC motor can be used as a low-speed generator or an automotive alternator but these are designed to work at much higher speeds so some form of gearing may be required. A wind turbine generator makes an ideal waterwheel generator as it is designed for low speed, high output operation.

If there is a fairly fast flowing river or stream near to your home or garden which you can use, then a small scale hydro power system may be a better alternative to other forms of renewable energy sources such as “Wind Energy” or “Solar Energy” as it has a lot less visual impact. Also just like wind and solar energy, with a grid-connected small scale waterwheel designed generating system connected to the local utility grid, any electricity you generate but don’t use can be sold back to the electricity company.

In the next tutorial about Hydro Energy, we will look at the different types of turbines available which we could attach to our waterwheel design for hydro power generation. For more information about Waterwheel Design and how to generate your own electricity using the power of water, or obtain more hydro energy information about the various waterwheel designs available, or to explore the advantages and disadvantages of hydro energy, then Click Here to order your copy from Amazon today about the principles and construction of waterwheels which can be used for generating electricity.

Gravity devices are those where any kinetic energy present at the entry of the device is either minimal or lost in turbulence and does nor contribute measurably to the output of the device. Such devices include most waterwheel types, Archimedes screws (where the outer case rotates with the flutes); Hydrodynamic screws (as used for sewage pumping and now being used in reverse as low-head prime-movers); Norias (more commonly used for raising water) and consist of a string of buckets like an overshot waterwheel attached to form a chain, and positive displacement devices or hydraulic engines.

Impulse turbines are those where the potential energy in a ‘head of water’ is largely converted into kinetic energy at a nozzle or spout. The simplest of such devices is the Gharat or Norse Wheel (where the conversion to kinetic energy takes place in an open flume). The more conventional devices harness the potential energy in a pipeline or penstock that terminates in a nozzle. The flow path through the turbine is usually used to describe the specific device, namely, tangential-flow, radial-flow, cross-flow, axial-flow or mixed-flow. Specific turbine designers have been associated with most of these devices, though confusion can result because they often designed several different types of device (The Pelton Waterwheel Company also made cased reaction turbines, Herschel pre dates Jonval’s patent that was the precursor of the Turgo Impulse wheel, a single nozzle version developed by Gilkes. Donat Banki, a Hungarian was also making cross-flow turbines many years before Mitchell and Ossburger came on the scene.

Free-stream devices encompass large slow running wheels and turbines, some of which are being tried out for marine energy applications. Like wind turbines, the power delivered increases as a cube of the velocity, such that a doubling of the velocity gives an eight fold increase in power output. The devices themselves are very large and slow running and only have very specialised applications for extracting small amounts of power from bank-side locations on very large rivers.

One of the most successful high head turbines was developed in California during the gold rush from a device referred to as a ‘hurdy gurdy’ that was basically a cartwheel with buckets around the periphery. A carpenter by the name of Lester Pelton came up with the now familiar double bucket shape and went on to found ‘The Pelton Watewheel Company’ of San Francisco. The bucket design was later improved by Doble who joined the company as an engineer in 1899. Doble’s improvement is the central cut-out in the bucket that prevents the water jet from first striking the back of the bucket and wasting energy. www.oldpelton.net. Today, similar machines are operating from over 1000 metres of fall and generating up to 100MW of power.

The waterwheels that were used on these sites in the U.K. are usually of the Roman or horizontal shaft type, though the vertical shaft type is much more common in Mediterranean and Asian countries. Depending on the fall of water available, the horizontal wheels are classified into ‘Overshot’, ‘Breast-shot’, ‘Back-shot’ and ‘Under-shot’. With the exception of projects to restore a mill to its original design, or where the visual appearance is important to maintain, only the overshot wheel is suitable for a new power generation projects.

Overshot waterwheels are the most fish-friendly and able to handle leaves and sticks. A similar device is the Noria or chain wheel, which has the disadvantage of potential more maintenance, but it runs faster, is more efficient and easier to install than an overshot waterwheel.

The power available is a function of the head and flow so building a large wheel will only increase the cost and reduce the shaft speed but not increase the power. Major components in the cost are the primary gearbox and the material required in the construction of the wheel itself. We are happy to build any type of waterwheel, but the cost is likely to be significantly greater than that of an equivalent turbine, when you take the gearing and installation costs into consideration. There are no short cuts with waterwheels and the engineering has to be good, on account of the high torque in the low speed drive.

Mills with ponds are seldom suitable for redevelopment for anything other than a few kilowatts because the water flow is obviously too little to sustain the mill on a continuous basis, and it is much too expensive to install a wheel or turbine that can only be operated for a few hours a day. In some cases the ponds were only used in the summer months when the water was low, but today we are looking to the higher winter flow for the bulk of the power that can be used for heating. There is always a loss of head into and out of the pond, but this may be recoverable with a turbine installation.

Mills on weirs or with short wide diversion channels present the most difficult challenge for the developer. The available head may only be a metre or so and the flow required to generate useful amounts of power will be several cubic metres of water per second. The undershot waterwheels that were originally used at these sites are totally redundant on account of their high cost and low efficiency. The exact layout of the site becomes increasingly important with the lower falls, because access for excavators and to install the large items of equipment is more difficult.

Tubular turbines of the propeller type can be used for mill sites with a higher head, typically those that originally employed ‘Overshot’ waterwheels. Many different arrangements are possible to suite existing civil works but the main compromise arises from their inflexible performance. If the mill is only extracting a small percentage of the available water from the main river, then there is no problem. If however the water flow reduces below that which is required to supply the turbine, either water storage, another smaller turbine or a change in turbine speed will be required.

Low cost open impulse turbineshave been developed by us, primarily for projects in the Developing World. Installed outside the mill house like a waterwheel, it is an economic alternative for smaller domestic sites here in the U.K. They cannot be used with a draft tube since the runner is open to the atmosphere but the installation and maintenance is much simpler. The valve control shaft is extended through the mill house wall to an operating lever on the ,inside or a simple open shoot conveys the water directly to the runner in the manner of the old ‘flutter wheels’ used in the USA in the 19c. Installation work is usually kept to a minimum and may be in an old waterwheel pit or even behind an existing wheel under the launder. A vertical shaft version like the Indian Gharat can produce considerably more power by increasing the entry area, whilst maintaining its self-cleaning characteristics.

Working model of an overshot water wheel, includes a long driven axe that can be used for workloads and an ajustable mill race so you can descover how moving it"s position effects the wheel.

Water wheels consist of large wooden or metal wheels which have paddles or buckets arranged around the outside rim. The force or the weight of the water on the paddles or buckets turns the wheel.

The axle of the wheel also turns, and this is used to drive the machine by way of belts or gears. The flowing channel of water is called a ‘mill race’. The race that brings the water from the ‘mill pond’ to the wheel is called the ‘head race’ and the channel that carries the water away is the ‘tail race’.

In an overshot water wheel the mill race brings the water to the top of the wheel, where it strikes the paddles or buckets and turns the wheel. This is more efficient because as well as the force of the flowing water, the weight of the falling water also helps to turn the wheel. This design sometimes had buckets mounted only on one rim of the wheel, so that these filled with water, making that side of the wheel heavier.

Because it uses the potential energy of the falling water, an overshot water wheel will still work even when the flow of water is not very fast. The larger the diameter of the wheel, the greater ‘leverage’ and so the greater turning effect on the axle that drives the machine.

Overshot weaving is an American artform of the Appalachian region of the United States. Overshot’s geometry may be familiar because of its ubiquity in coverlet weaving in that area in the 18th century. Its origins go even further back, its motifs appearing in northern Europe, the Phillipines and ancient Persia.

Overshot is a weave structure, woven on four harness looms. It is typically composed of a plain colored, cotton or linen warp (the threads held under tension on the loom) and a colorful, woolen weft (the floating yarn, wound onto a bobbin and passed through alternating warp threads). The warp threads are tied onto the loom in a sequence that allows for floating, woolen wefts to create the stunning, optical effects that lend overshot its distinctive patterning.