Hi yooper,
With respect to your considerable electrical experience and knowledge (some of it obtained by hard lessons) there are several things that I think you should consider:
First of all, some members on the site are showing concern for the risk that they see you attempting to take on. I believe that we electricians offer a very valuable service to our communities, because we care about the safety of our fellow citizens and because we collectively know a lot about a very dangerous utility. And we know that it can cause a lot of harm if unleashed or not properly designed and controlled. The recent Detroit residential fires come to mind, for example. So we are worried that you will place yourself at risk of doing something outside of the area that you are insured for. What if your design build system fails at a crucial moment? What if expensive or harmful things are attributed to something that you did? Would it not be better for you to offer to sit on a committee that helps to hire a qualified design firm for the city? Your knowledge would then be invaluable to the process, without you putting yourself in harms way.
The second thing I would like to say is that you are asking for design information from the members here that we are for the most part unable to provide, because we just do not know. Hydraulic systems are just as complicated to design as electrical systems. For this reason, design professionals who work in this field are specialists who contract with utilities or cities. They also carry very expensive insurance to protect them and their companies in case they are found (either correctly or incorrectly) to be responsible for a major malfunction which causes someone harm. Are you willing to do this design-build and take on such risk?
Homer
