Innovation in rainwater harvesting helps Cleve farmer get through dry times – ABC News

When you aren’t connected to mains water and the location you farm in isn’t known for high rains, needing to record your own water is among the only choices.

Secret points: Expense about $100,000 to set up, but with expense of water

to however, these costs have now been covered When the rain does not fall, there is absolutely nothing to record, so you

require a plan B. Back in 2011 Mark and Andrea Hannemann, who farm north of Cleve on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, desired to discover a better way to harvest and hold water.They came up

with a sheeted catchment water-harvesting scheme, which sits at the greatest point on their farm and the water captured is utilized for stock, spraying and around the home.

Works efficiently Mr Hannemann stated the set-up included a catchment area determining 80 metres by 40 metres, which gravitated into a three-metre deep holding dam.”The catchment and the dam are lined with polyethylene plastic and usually has a drifting cover to remove evaporation losses, however that has actually been harmed recently and we need to get a brand-new one,” Mr Hannemann said.

“When everything is working it is 98 per cent efficient and for each millimetre of rain, per square metre, we collect a litre of water.”

No pumps, all gravity The water plan sits at the top of the property’s catchment area and is roughly around the 380m above sea level mark. From this point, they have the ability to gravitate the water through pipelines to all paddocks on the property.Mr Hannemann

stated since the scheme was based on gravity, there were no pumps required.

“There are no working parts and there is very little upkeep,” he said.

“If there are sheep in a paddock, you simply switch a trough on and the water exists.”

Concept catching on Mr Hannemann stated they took a look at a variety of various water schemes, but it was some od those already set up on the Eyre Peninsula that they designed their concept on.”There is one at Arno Bay that collects the water off of the Viterra infrastructure into a dam and they feed that onto the regional oval and bowling green.”He said there was also a set-up at Kimba that he took a look at that was a sheeted catchment, which ran into”a million-gallon ex-government tank”that farmers might access.Since they created their system, many others have followed with comparable design water catchment systems.”There are numerous football clubs that have something like this watering their oval and we have actually spoken to a great deal of farmers right across Australia about what we have actually done.”

No rain implies no water capturing Like lots of farmers on the Eastern Eyre Peninsula, the last few years have actually been some of the most affordable in terms of rainfall.For the Hannemanns

a typical annual rainfall would be simply over 400 millimetres, which could help them record 1.6 million litres of water … enough for the residential or commercial property for a year.But in 2019 they got simply 200 millimetres of rain and it has suggested they have actually needed to go back to hauling water, which can cost about$ 11,000 a year. “Last year was our most affordable rainfall on record and last year the plan actually let us down for the very first time, because we were using more water than we were able to capture, so we needed to haul water, which was lengthy and costly,”Mr Hannemann said. Well worth it With this in mind, the Hannemanns are now looking at expanding the water catching plan to get them through if there are more below-average years ahead.”Looking forward, we might go a bit bigger. “Generally, we needed our typical rainfall to fill the system in a 12-month duration, so I would most likely go half that size we have once again.”Then with the water we utilize, when we get these dry

years, it might satisfy our requirements.” And despite the fact that the system didn’t provide [water] over the in 2015, Mr Hannemann

said the plan was well worth setting up at an expense of about $100,000.”When we initially put it

in, water was about$1.50(a kilolitre )and we were wanting to repay this system in 10 years.”However the cost of water went to$3.50( a kilolitre)quite rapidly and it was paid off in about five

years, so if you have actually got the infrastructure that can sustain your water requirements it is well worth checking out.”