Water #2

Hi, there. It’s me again.

If you have never read or listened to the Hank the Cowdog books, you may not get that reference, and boy, are you missing a treat! Hank the Cowdog books were our go-to audiobooks when the kids were younger and we were on road trips and wanted to postpone the inevitable “are we there yet?” as long as possible.

But, I digress, on to the topic at hand:

Water…

Our system has 3,000 gallons of water storage in 10, 300 gallon troughs. The corrals are inside the grazing unit and have an additional 100 gallons of water.

We chose to use a permanent water installation, mostly because I still have a day job. I cannot reliably ferry water to the livestock due to working hours and travel. Hiring someone to do it didn’t sound like a really good option and the numbers seem to support that. Allowing the livestock to go to the lake would violate the terms of our NRCS contract as well as the principles of good conservation. So, pipeline it is.

The pipeline is 1.25” polyethylene. I bought the material in 500 ft rolls so that Bryan and I could handle it (bigger rolls were just too big for us). A ride-on trencher rented for a day was all I needed to dig about 2600 ft of trench from the lake’s edge to the last pair of paddocks. I was a dusty mess after that!

Joining polyethylene is done in two ways - either it is heat welded or couplers are used. Heat welding involves some specialized equipment that we had never used. So, couplers were up, then. NRCS specifications required that the joining method had to meet certain ASTM standards. That took out some of the simpler coupling systems and led us to FloPlast compression fittings. They met the federal specs and were actually easy to use.

We have two different brands of water trough, both acquired at a ranch supply store. The Rubbermaid troughs have held up much better than the other brand. Rubbermaid is an elastomer (rubbery) while the other is a rigid foam material that has cracked in two cases.

The pipeline was laid and the troughs connected. Time for a pump. Our pump is a 4 in submersible set 3 ft below the surface of the lake in 8 ft of water. Our lake is stained, but otherwise very clear (not much silt at the pump location). Power is 220 VAC supplied from a dedicated circuit coming from our house. The biggest problem so far has been rodents in the lake. On several occasions, beaver or nutria chewed through the wiring harness to the pump just at the waterline, even though it was in a conduit - plastic, unfortunately. On two other occasions, gophers chewed into the pipeline in the paddocks. I put the wiring harness into a steel flexible conduit and resolved that problem. The gophers have left the pipeline alone for 3 years, now.

The submersible pumps seem to have a life of about 2 years. Pumps are almost always a maintenance item, in my experience. Our pump is mounted on a 2.375 in steel pipe by a custom made pump holder. The holder allows the pump to be raised and lowered with boat winch mounted at the top of the steel pipe. The synthetic line on the winch also had to be changed out for a steel cable to defeat the pesky water rats!

And it all works for a total cost of approximately $5,000. Your costs may vary based on what you choose to use and where you get it.

Next time, let’s talk about options!