grumpyAdjusting Mother Nature's water plan. Er...slightly.
February 12th 2008 04:32
Thought I might show you one of the ways I now get water in summer. It all started when I got the cows, because the lower paddock had no water trough, but it does have a very small spring of ground water which trickles down all year from the hills above us and passes though an area behind the cow shed. Only problem was this area was a mess and too close to a bad boundary fence to let the cows have access to it. What to do?
The thought came that I could dam the water further up and then pipe it down to a trough. Then I could fence off the wetland bit so it could remain pristine and not full of cow shit. So that’s what I did. One old plastic drum cut in half; one piece for the dam and one for the trough and a bit of plastic pipe. It took about an hour to fill the trough, in which I then cut an overflow notch in the side so the water could run out and down into the rocks where it continues its descent under ground to the river, way, way down below us. Unfortunately (or fortunately – it depends on how much you like endless work) my wife suddenly realized that all this “extra” water was going to waste. Pointing out the obvious fact that it had therefore been “going to waste” for millennia only gained me the usual cold stare, which means something like: “I don’t care if God planned it that way - do something about it!”
So I installed another drum, this time a full size one standing upright near the trough. I fed the water into it a little way up from the bottom so that any sludge would collect below, then I let it fill. Surprisingly, it filled almost to the top by the time the dam was over flowing. So I drilled a hole for the cow trough pipe just below this level so the water could fill the trough only after the drum was near full. Between the inlet and the outlet pipes I now had about 120 litres of water I could siphon out. It takes about two and half hours to fill the drum, so I figured I could pump it out about 8 times a day. The pump was installed at the same level as the inlet and the water is pumped 70 metres up the hill to the big tank at the back of the barn. A timer runs the pump, switching it on for six minutes every three hours. The pictures below show the deal.
So… end result? I get approx 960 litres of extra water a day, that’s 6720 litres a week– enough to refill both the barn and house tanks every six weeks.
Now the pump, the fittings, the pipe and the drums together cost me about $350 and it took me about two days to do it all.
That means I ‘m getting an extra 350,000 litres of water a year at a cost of about 0.0011 cents a litre for the first year and then at a cost of about 0.0001 cents per litre after that if you count the cost of the power to run the pump.
There is a small problem (there always is) with now having 4 times more water than we actually use. My wife is now walking around the gardens, casting a careful eye over their various states of growth and fullness. I dread to think what is going through her mind.
The thought came that I could dam the water further up and then pipe it down to a trough. Then I could fence off the wetland bit so it could remain pristine and not full of cow shit. So that’s what I did. One old plastic drum cut in half; one piece for the dam and one for the trough and a bit of plastic pipe. It took about an hour to fill the trough, in which I then cut an overflow notch in the side so the water could run out and down into the rocks where it continues its descent under ground to the river, way, way down below us. Unfortunately (or fortunately – it depends on how much you like endless work) my wife suddenly realized that all this “extra” water was going to waste. Pointing out the obvious fact that it had therefore been “going to waste” for millennia only gained me the usual cold stare, which means something like: “I don’t care if God planned it that way - do something about it!”
The dam...
Storage drum and pump - cow trough in background
So… end result? I get approx 960 litres of extra water a day, that’s 6720 litres a week– enough to refill both the barn and house tanks every six weeks.
Now the pump, the fittings, the pipe and the drums together cost me about $350 and it took me about two days to do it all.
That means I ‘m getting an extra 350,000 litres of water a year at a cost of about 0.0011 cents a litre for the first year and then at a cost of about 0.0001 cents per litre after that if you count the cost of the power to run the pump.
There is a small problem (there always is) with now having 4 times more water than we actually use. My wife is now walking around the gardens, casting a careful eye over their various states of growth and fullness. I dread to think what is going through her mind.
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