Water system upgrade

mahoney_j

If anyone has done same lately i would like some advice/Ideas.Currently i am milking 70 odd cows with potential to go to maby 90 to 100.The problem is that my water system is compleyely outdated.The main ater line carrying water to my paddocks is only3/4 inch hydrodare pipe.I barely got away for last few weeks trying to keep water into cows ,The only saving grace i had was that i have 250 gallon jfc troughs in most of the paddocks.I just saw an add from terra sercices which operate a mole ploughing service as well as laying out pipe at same time.I quite like this idea as at the moment pipes are just a little below the ground and most years i have a couple of leaks from machinery or cows crossing over them.On pipe size i am thinking of maby inch and a half.I s this too big???.I am on a group scheme and water supply is no issue.Quite cheap too Costs me 400 bucks a year:)

bt12

a lad i know in west clare had terra do a job for him, v impressive setup and v
quick to install,think they put down a 32mm main line in a loop system with troughs taken off in 25mm

farmerjack

I got terra services to pipe my place this spring, troughs delivered on Monday I placed them on Tuesday and they came on Wednesday, they had 1500 meters of pipe layed in about 5 hours. Couldn't recommend them highly enough.

John_F

a cork man also offering a vibrating mole plough, he does work outside of ireland aswell

http://michaelwhitepumps.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1z8WdGsWSM

Timmaay

farmerjack wrote: »

I got terra services to pipe my place this spring, troughs delivered on Monday I placed them on Tuesday and they came on Wednesday, they had 1500 meters of pipe layed in about 5 hours. Couldn't recommend them highly enough.

You mind giving a rough figure of how much this all cost? An upgrade is badly needed here also, I'm in a similar boat to mahoney, 3/4 inch pipe for 70cows, and I'm going to be pushing that out to about 85 next summer. I need to spend money on other areas in the farm also, so cashflow will be tight, I might just be replacing the 150gls troughs with IBCs as a temporary measure for next year.

mahoney_j

If anyone could give us an idea of cost it would be much appreciated,rather that posting here if you would prefer to pm me and now Timmay as well seeing as he is in simillar boat it would be appreciated.anyway I rang terra this am and they are going to get a lad out to have a look at what I want and to quote for job.

farmerjack

Timmaay wrote: »

You mind giving a rough figure of how much this all cost? An upgrade is badly needed here also, I'm in a similar boat to mahoney, 3/4 inch pipe for 70cows, and I'm going to be pushing that out to about 85 next summer. I need to spend money on other areas in the farm also, so cashflow will be tight, I might just be replacing the 150gls troughs with IBCs as a temporary measure for next year.

9 concrete 180 gallon troughs including all fittings, supplied and laying of 1500 meters of 32mm pipe came to approx 5500 euros. Worth every penny,I had great piece of mind in the recent dry spell

Timmaay

Less than I thought, time to spash the cash and stop annoying myself with a temporary job!

grazeaway

not sure if this would be practicle for you. but the lad that put in the new pump at my place was telling me that he has installed a good few big storage tanks for lads that have started to increase thier herd size.

basiclly he puts in a big plastic tank up high on the farm and pumps water on the night meter this fills up any troughs or tanks on the system, during the day the water flow out of the tank as it is needed. this is mostly used for drinking water and as a buffer for when the power goes down. A lot of the time during the day the water is getting drawn to other uses like the house and washing machine etc etc so at night there is plenty of pressure to fill the tank

i suppose it depend on how much water you need and on the cost of re pipign everthing.

farmerjack

I meant to add that I got them to fit a water meter to monitor supply to the water troughs. During one week of the dry spell the cows averaged 120 litres day!

grazeaway

farmerjack wrote: »

I meant to add that I got them to fit a water meter to monitor supply to the water troughs. During one week of the dry spell the cows averaged 120 litres day!

is that per cow?

Farfield

Water supply same here - 3/4 inch piped mains water doing 50 ish cows with old drinkers. I was thinking of putting in big volume drinkers in the fields and leaving the supply for now as it is. The house, yard and cattle sheds are fed from a good well seperately, so not much demand on the mains water during the day other than for the cows. Maybe it wouldnt be good enough if i went up to 75 cows?

yellow50HX

Farfield wrote: »

Water supply same here - 3/4 inch piped mains water doing 50 ish cows with old drinkers. I was thinking of putting in big volume drinkers in the fields and leaving the supply for now as it is. The house, yard and cattle sheds are fed from a good well seperately, so not much demand on the mains water during the day other than for the cows. Maybe it wouldnt be good enough if i went up to 75 cows?

i scratch my head when i hear about lads using mains on thier farm or maybe thats just me. what would the mains bill for the farm be when the cost of mains water going to soar in the coming years would a good well be a better option? The cost of the piping and drinker troughs will be the same.

Cow Porter

digging this up again here if its ok. have a farm leased over the ditch and cows walking to it, his water system is a bit iffy and fear we will be landed in it in summer. we could pipe from our own well alright, farthest paddock is about 1km away, water would have to go down a hill and up again.

the pipe coming from our well to pressure tank is 1 inch maybe inch and a quarter. if i put in inch and 3/4 or so will it be of any benefit if it is coming from the well in a smaller size??

or else put in a buffer tank somewhere??