When HebTroCo started we decided that we wanted real people to represent our products. There’s nothing wrong with models and PR agencies and so on. But it’s not really us.
We decided to show off our trousers by showing them on people who we think look cool because they are cool. They are all friends and supporters of HebTroCo. Real people who wear our trousers….wherever.
These people. They are just men at the moment (we will have trousers for women all in good time). These people are workers who do great and useful things. It is on them that we think we can best show the trousers that we are so proud of.
The first in this series is Bede Mullen who lives in the Colden Valley in Hebden Bridge. He’s lived there since the 1980s and he’s done something amazing with his time. We think he’s a lovely looking chap too.
We’ll let him tell his story in his own words..
Great yesterdays are left lying in the Colden Valley, gouged out by a glacier where moor-water toils in exhilaration with their rapid decent.
“The Colden Valley next to Hebden Bridge is a special place; at ease with nature yet shrouded by the remains of early industrialization. It is the site of some of the earliest mills of the industrial revolution. Within a two-mile stretch of the valley lie the remains of 12 cotton mills, their skeletons remain showing foundations, walls, goyts, weirs and dams. The river and its waterpower are the reason the mills are there. The 19th century saw a Klondike development with local entrepreneurs outdoing each other with the size of their mills, the capacity of their dams and weirs. Men like Gammallie Sutcliffe created a dynasty of mill owners who diversified into myriad businesses still extant in the Calder Valley, he was the Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of his day.
The innovation, which saw the quiet Colden Valley transform itself into the heart of the early industrial revolution in West Yorkshire, is still present today.  I’ve spent the past two years restoring the historic mill hydro infrastructure and upgrading it with the latest technology. A new 7 metre wide weir has been installed behind the original mill weir to abstract water from the river. The stainless steel coanda screens on the weir are self-cleaning and their shape accelerates the speed of the water while at the same time increasing surface tension to draw water into a channel underneath the screen. Coanda curves are used in the aeronautics and automobile industry and can be seen on aircraft wings and formula one cars. Their application to hydroelectric schemes increases efficiency making better use of the available water.
Installing the weir was a complex job requiring the river to be diverted twice using coffer dams to direct the water past the construction work; a technique which would have been used by the early pioneers when Lower Lumb Mill was built in 1802. Great care was taken to protect the original crescent shaped stone weir that now forms a feature of the new coanda weir, linking old with new technology.
The abstracted water is transferred via a penstock pipe dropping 17 meters before re-entering the river after passing through a cross flow turbine. The dimensions of the weir and the penstock pipe have been calibrated so that the system can take no more than the maximum permitted abstraction of 360 litres per second. Again, linking old with new, the route of the penstock follows that of the original mill goyts; their walls have being rebuild in stone found on site and they look just like they would have done when first built.
A two-story turbine house positioned next to the river is the heart of the hydroelectric scheme. Its foundations are two meters below the riverbed, which allows water from the scheme to be discharged without causing damage to the river. The water enters the turbine house via the penstock pipe at a speed of one meter per second. It is then accelerated significantly by reducing the shape and cross section of the pipe at its connection to the turbine and, after passing through the turbine, discharges the water underneath the surface of the river creating a vacuum. As a result, water passes through the turbine at 21 metres per second, producing 45 Kw of electricity, enough to power 40 houses and reduce CO2 emissions by 60 tonnes per year.
All the equipment in the turbine house is state of the art and built specifically for the hydro scheme at Lower Lumb. With regular maintenance the installation it will last well over 30 years and then is only likely to need replacement of bearings and armature rewinding before going on for another 30 years. Quality of equipment is matched with innovation with the hydro scheme being controlled from an app on a smart phone!
The turbine house is constructed with steel reinforced concrete clad in stone from the original mill. Traditional building techniques have been used with quoins, jambs and a segmental arch producing a building that looks as though it was part of the original mill.
The hydro electric scheme at Lower Lumb Mill is bringing back to life a technology which once defined the place in the same way HebTro Co is breathing life back into Hebden Bridge known the world over as ‘Trouser Town.’ With innovation, quality of materials and workmanship both will last for generations.”
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