[Paul Wheaton]

I have 80 acres shaped like a tall rectangle. See the green rectangle

In the bottom right corner is a pond with a pump, the house, etc. About a quarter of the way up is the lowest spot. And then some hills go up a bit and then it's kind rolly.

This picture is from the porch on the house facing north across the low spot. The fartheset away trees are the trees you see in the first picture.

We call that the north forest. We like to run the goats there in the summer because there's lots for them to eat and it stays pretty cool. But running water up there every day is a bit of a chore. Now we're thinking of running cows up there and they would need even more water.

We're going to rent a ditch witch soon and got to thinking it might not be a bad idea to bury a couple thousand feet of poly pipe up there.

Another perk is that some day we might hook up a ram pump, build a pond up there and fill the pond in the spring. Then maybe use that water for livestock and maybe even irrigation.

The farm supply store regularly sells 100 foot rolls of 1 inch poly for ten bucks. I wonder if we could find a place that sells 1000 foot rolls for something like 50 bucks. Too much to hope for?

Then I got to wondering whether our 1.5hp pump could pump water that far.

Is this a bad idea and I just don't know it yet?

 

[Paul Wheaton]

Lots of those questions I don't know the answers to, but I'll try ...

14 head of cattle. 15 goats.

I think the pond is lower than the highest point on the other side, but I'm not sure how much lower.

The property is a quarter mile wide and a half mile long. I was thinking that we would be talking about 3000 feet of pipe.

Well, we didn't drain the pump this winter and now it's totalled. Gonna buy a new one. The last one was 1.5 hp and the first 500 feet of pipe is 1.5 inch. We learned early on that if you hook garden hoses up, that you need to run at least three full blast at the same time or else you can have problems (garden hose stuff cannot handle that much pressure).

Storage: I was just thinking stock tanks. We've been packing water up for goats in five gallon buckets twice a day.

Control strategy? I was thinking we would try to fill the tanks once a day. Turn the irrigation system on, go up and turn the spigot on where the stock tank is and fill it. Turn it off when done.

Yes, I'm thinking that this is for the warmer times of year only. Maybe creep into the fall a little.

 

[Paul Wheaton]

Leaks .... Do you suppose the leaks come from freezing? If I bury this at least two feet (my local frost line is apparently 18 inches), do you suppose I might not have this problem? I should I be thinking that with that much pipe, it is a problem I won't be able to get away from?

Currently, my first 800 feet is 1.5 inch poly pipe. Maybe I should do 1.5 for another few hundred, then 1.25 for the next thousand, and then 1 inch pipe the rest of the way ???

It seems that when I bought the 1.5 inch poly, it was $30 per hundred feet and the 1 inch poly was $10 per hundred feet. Are these pretty standard costs? I've tried to do some research and it is beginning to look like this is the best rate I'm going to see.

 

[Paul Wheaton]

The current pump (which we might be able to repair) sat about two feet above the water line. I had rigged up an intake that would float about three inches below the water line in the middle of the pond and has filters on it to keep debris out - although algae will still probably form. With the pump on and two sprinklers going, trying to use a water wand with a rossette on the end, blew the rosette off. This was about 400 feet from the source and through 50 feet of standard garden hose. Since city water is 65 psi, I would guess that this would be about 100psi. Ever since that event, we don't run the pump unless at least three sprinkers are open and ready to roll.

So my thinking is that the pump has quite a lot of push and based on the stuff I've read here, I would guess that this pump will be fine for this project.

During the summer we run the pump about two hours each morning, watering different things. I figure that we'll fill the stock tank at about the same time we are irrigating stuff, thus getting a better bang for the buck when the pump is running.

Plus, salatin has that thing where you use gravity to feed your irrigation system. I kinda like the idea of building the pond at the highest point on the property and then when the pump is run, it chips in a wee bit to the pond (or a ram pump can help fill the pond in the spring). And then that water might be able to be used gravity-feed-style without running the pump.

It seems that in the long run there are ways to get the overall system to be more efficient.