I looked up Pelton wheels but I need pressure and the way my stream is setup and it's real purpose which is to flow into rice like wetland patches I can't alter it. From where my wheel is located that is the only spot that has a vertical drop of around 4ft. Before and after this location I get a drop of a foot at about 80yards. I can't run a long pipe or the water will bypass the diversions where it feeds the patches.
Looks like most Pelton wheels need 10 to 20 ft of head to operate(powerpout.com). They call that low head but for me that hight means 1/2 a mile or more of pipe. Not an option for me. With 4ft of drop it seems my wheel can only be 4ft for an overshot. I'm maxed out on width so now the option your saying is to get more water over it to increase torque. Gonna give that a try.
Sucks that I have these limitations or I would go crazy with a hydro system that could produce some crazy watts.

So your saying with more water it will give me more torque? So if I build a larger wheel I won't get more torque then my 4ft wheel? For some reason I was thinking of a wheel like a breaker bar wrench. Longer the wrench the more torque at the pivot point. So I need to get the trough setup as an overshot and channel as much water as I can to get the toque I need? I'll try that this week and see what happens. Gonna take me a few hrs to build and install the new trough. Thanks for the help. I'll keep you posted in a few days when I complete the over shot.

Oh. Correction. From what your link showed I guess I have a breast shot design. Gonna have to stick with this cause my max head height is 4 to 5ft

That's what I was afraid of. I'm thinking of going with an 8ft wheel but an undershot is my only option cause I can't get my head any higher then it is. I might be able to squeeze out 6 more inches. Gonna research a few wheel options and proper trough design. In the pic I'm only using a third of the flow. But now I'll focus the whole stream into the trough and hope I get enough torque with an 8ft wheel. Do you think that could work?

The PMA they say should give me 2000 but they used to say 2800. I doubt that I would get anything that high even with limitless options and wheel size on this motor but if I can get a 1000 watts then I'm happy. Enough to keep my battery bank happy through the night. Thank you guys for your direction and guidance. And if you got more to teach I'm all ears. If I succeed to get this working then I must credit all you for your help.

Aloha:) I'm the rookie idiot to this site and need some help with my hydro water wheel. Just an off grid guy but not a wiz at it so be kind:)

So I built a 4ft diameter by 18in wheel. I have it geared hoping to get close to 1000 rpm. When the water wheel is free spinning it gets up to 55rpm but once I hook it up to the PMA the resistance slows my wheel down to 12rpm. So when I play with my gearing to get more speed it makes it worst. I have a good flow but my max head is 4ft. I get between 600 to 800gpm. I'm using an undershot setup. I'm guessing I need more torque but am I maxed out for my wheel? Do I have to go bigger? Oh! btw my PMA is a freedom 2 so not sure if it's a good choice of motor I bought.

So any advise would be valuable and kindly taken.