This could be a part of the picture along with wind and solar. Just put the turbine in your incoming water line. Every time you flush the toilet or take a shower,wash clothes,etc..your making electricity.If you lived in a large apartment complex you could be making electricity all the time. Hey why didn't I think of that...I have a school across the street from me I wonder if they would let me stick  a turbine in their water line..lol.. I'll sneak over at night..yeah that's the ticket..

  You could always work a deal with the water company.   They pump it up to you and you run your turbine generator and store the discharge water in your loft tank.  (what the heck is it with tanks on and in the roof lately)   Then they shut their motors off and you let the water stored in the tank go back through the line to spin their turbine so they can get a little of their juice back.   Of course let the water go  backwards through your turbine 1st so you get a little juice on the back feed too.

@All,

Actually, I have to admit, using a Bernoulli
aspiration pump you can pump 6 gallons of
recycled water to the roof using only one
gallon of utility pressure water. The water
tank could be on or under the ground. So
that cuts water use to 1/7 of that calculated,
if you really *want* to do this. That's still
a lot of garden hoses worth though! (After
all this *is* overunity.com )

Google "pumps a lot" or "miracle mini pump"

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

    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.