hey Happy New Year everyone its retired
at 40 my new year's resolution is to
heat my greenhouse all year round and
I'm going to try and do it with this
inexpensive windmill it's a it's
actually win the middle brand and the
model is DB 400 you can pick these up on
Amazon or Ebay relatively inexpensive I
think they're around 350 to 400 dollars
it claims to be a 400 watt wind turbine
we're gonna give it the test today first
thing we're gonna do is open it up and
just kind of see what all is in here
what you get for the 350 to 400 dollars
okay what do we get in the box it looks
like this is the body of the window you
get a charge controller which is kind of
nice that it comes with one I don't know
how good a quality it is a user manual
this looks like a nose cone a parts bag
and then here's your blaze
so my first impressions of this are
pretty good nothing really seems like
it's flimsy it's all pretty well built
which obviously it needs to be if it's
being exposed to weather and wind rain
snow ice you know all that good stuff
that kind of just puts a beating on this
constantly but nothing's flimsy
everything seems like it's pretty good
quality just gonna show you the Box real
quick it says it's 400 watts that seems
like a pretty ambitious statement on
their part but we'll see what it truly
does I don't see that it hasn't built in
charge controller which is kind of cool
that's going to limit the voltage that
it puts into your battery so it doesn't
overcharge it and then on the side on
this side you have some specs it says
400 watts once again rated speed your
output voltage is 0 to 15 volts minimum
cut in wind speed is 6 point 7 miles per
hour
survival wind speed is 110 so it doesn't
recommend going over 110 and that would
be with the break on suggested battery
capacity is greater than 50 amp hours
it's really important not to put this
back on your head you don't want to
suffocate as this sticker says so you're
supposed to actually mount this to a
pole before you put the blades on but
just for the purpose of this video I'm
gonna put the blades on just so you can
see what what it takes
there's really not much to it it takes a
three bolts in each blade there's three
blades and it is kind of nice because
they give you the allen key and a wrench
you know a lot of places anymore they
don't even give you the tools that you
need
together
[Music]
one thing I think I would change on this
is they just give you straight washers
there's no lock washers and a lock
washer if you don't know what it is it's
the one with a little slit in it and
what that does is it keeps pressure on
the nut
it keeps the nut from loosening itself
up over time with vibration and just
moving it back and forth I'll probably
do that before I actually get this
mounted I'll add some lock off those and
lock washers all right that was really
really easy now I gotta do is just snap
this nose cone onto here so I've got
kind of a temporary pull set up on the
second level of our house just to kind
of see how this thing moves what kind of
water just gonna put out it's let's head
up there okay so I'm on the second story
of my house I have a temporary pole just
leaning there I'm gonna take some
electrical conduit clamps and clamp it
to that pole and then I can actually put
the wind turbine up on top of that pole
[Music]
if I did actually take the blades off I
did also find my first weak spot of this
thing and that is the nose cone when I
was putting nose cone on crack it the
nose cone is really really gradual the
plastic is really cheesy and so that's
my first thing that I I'm not liking
about this I'm gonna have to glue this
back together put some sort of epoxy or
something back on it but I did make an
attachment to go on to that one-inch
pipe the diameter of this post is going
to be inch and a half and then you slip
this rubber grommet over the top of it
and you feed this through and then
tighten it down I went ahead and drilled
a hole in this so I can feed my wires
through it and then I'll tighten it down
[Music]
and next we're gonna hook up this brake
controller and it should be really easy
everything's color-coded the red is just
your positive and then the brake is
actually just the the green and the
yellow wire and what this brake does if
a if you have a crazy storm where you
have really really high winds and it's
just it's not good for the windmill I
think what they say is 30 miles an hour
which doesn't sound like much to me but
you can you can manually flip this brake
on and it will actually shut the
windmill down it'll stop the blades
instantly just so it doesn't get damaged
in high winds okay I've got my
connections made up at the windmill and
then I've actually run the wires down
into the garden area where I'm gonna put
my brake if you're using the brake you
just put the red light the red lead and
a yellow lead together and then your
negative would go to the battery so I've
had this up for about a week now and
we've had basically no wind for about a
week until today and it got a storm kind
of blew in and got a little bit nasty I
just wanted to show you the difference
between having the brake on and the
brake off so I woke up and turned the
brake on last night because it was
really really blowing hard and right now
the brake is on
so it's just barely turning the blade
it's still turning it so with the brake
on it keeps producing power but it just
slows the blade down so it doesn't get
to a dangerous speed so I'm gonna go out
and I'm gonna turn the brake off and
show you the difference
so now that the brake is off you can see
that the wind can kind of just take its
course
and blow the blade as fast as the wind
is traveling so now I think it's a good
time since we've got a good wind to take
an unloaded meter reading it is a nasty
day out even the Coyotes are not not
having very much fun today but we've got
a nice consistent wind so it's a good
day to test the turbine all right so
we're about 8:00 right now I'm gonna
connect it to the battery obviously if
we just touch this battery which is
right now twelve point seven so in order
to figure out what this is gonna do with
a load on it we're gonna have to hook
something up to it all right so I've got
the two heat lamps hooked up and you a
power record right now it hasn't seemed
to really faze the turbine ill-effects
you get something that's really low
it'll start slowing the blades down but
125 watts of light bulbs eleven point
nine volts so you can see that it's
drawing you know the battery so there I
turned everything back off and it's a
twelve point four again peak to be
there's 11
12 13 14 15 16 so the winds picked up
just a little bit I'm gonna give this
one more shot I can see the needle on
the ammeter just kind of spiking up
every once a while so I want to see just
what one more reading is one final
reading all right so now that I'm out
here of course it's not doing what I
wanted to do it's hovering right around
six I did see it spike up to about 19
and I saw the amp meter get up to almost
10 so I'm gonna call that best-case
scenario because I don't think I would
want to be anywhere near this thing if
it was up in the 20 amp range there we
go there was a 19 for a second so we did
get a 19 on there that is with no load
so once again I'm gonna call that the
best case so let's go do some some quick
math and see if we can figure out what
the realistic wattage on this is so did
are inexpensive Amazon wind turbine live
up to its 400 watt expectation hardly
even at its peak unloaded performance it
was only at 19 volts and 10 amps and if
you take the volts times the amps that
will give you the wattage which is only
a hundred and ninety watts and obviously
if you put that under a load that would
dramatically decrease that wattage value
so if you found this video helpful make
sure you give me a thumbs up if you've
never joined us on this channel we do
some self sustained living some
gardening some cooking some grilling and
you get to join me and my family on
retiring at the age of 40 in the
meantime this is retired at 40 remaining
you to live life simple and we'll catch
you next week