One of the projects I have been working on since early this year is getting water resources onsite where the garlic field is. In the last month or so we got the well drilled. And now I wrapped up the plumbing inside the pump house so we can make use of the 200' well drilled next to the building. With a flow rate of nearly 30 gallons per minute we have a lot to work with. And using 100% solar power to energize it all feels really good. So getting all this setup before winter time was important so its ready to go next year as soon as the garlic starts growing faster.
The well pump was installed by the driller, and ran the lines up into the pump house for me. We used 3 inch sleeving underground to make it possible to route piping up into the pump house. Inside is a 119 gallon pressure tank. This will store pressured water inside between 80-100 PSI and then is ran through a filter and out a spigot on the wall of the building.
Coming out of the wall is a 3/4 pex line we will crimp a spigot to, then I can attach a water hose. First we need to trim off the excess.
The tank needed to be pressurized within two PSI of when the pump kicks on. So it needs to be brought up to 78 PSI. We tried using a little hand held battery pump, but quickly realized this was under powered to drive air into the tank.
So I found my larger 120V air compressor, and honestly it barely did the job. Never to deal with such a big air application before.
With the tank pressurized I got the pex line cut to size and attached a 3/4 inch spigot. Then ran a 100 foot hose across the field.
I bought a rain bird on a tripod to try out first. Though we will probably end up buying a reel irrigation system or run drip lines through out the field. Luckily this time of year the rains are enough to give the garlic cloves what they need to grow. But next year during spring and summer we will need to make sure they get 1 inch of water a week.
It works! We would need to move the rainbird 3-4 times to water the whole field this way. So its not ideal. But at least we have a crude way of doing it for the moment. In the future we can improve upon it and make sure it all works well going forward.
Next up is to get a heating system working inside the pump house. Soon we will be encountering freezing temperatures and I need to make sure all of the water equipment inside the pump house does not freeze. So setting up a small heater and thermostat is the next priority. I still have awhile before it gets cold enough to threaten the components inside. And its already all insulated, so it should be pretty straight forward getting that setup.