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I have to relocate my cattle pasture at some point. Where new pasture will be has no water at present. At one time I was thinking using a pond for a source but the pond needs a good cleaning (dredge) and to gravity feed like I was thinking would be into a low spot that would just be a mess to water cows in. There is an abandoned house that has an old well that I am currently thinking of using but no power. I’m not sure but thinking it’s 70-100 feet deep 6-700 feet away and 30-50 feet below where I would set a tank for the cows. The one that keeps popping up in google search is rps? Anybody have anything good or bad about their pumps or any others? I want to do it cheap but don’t want to do it so cheap it’s a pain in the neck. Like I said good bad or ugly I’d rather hear it hear than find out the hard way.
my cousin just put in a well 2 summers ago, uses solar panels to charge two car batteries and uses them as a power bank to run the pump from and waters his garden by pumping water up to big tanks for irrigation and also pumps to a 55 gallon barrel for a thermal shower head outdoor shower when they are working to rinse off before they head to the house. Works pretty dang slick if you ask me. he said he loves it I asked him about it a few weeks ago if he has had to use his pump to water his garden much this yr and he said no been catching good rains. its a DC pump it doesnt run off an inverter.
From what I have seen there are two types of pumps. One runs direct off the solar panels and you need a water storage tank for cloudy days or a battery powered that can store extra juice to pump with on cloudy days. I don’t do that good with electricity but I have run solar battery electric fence for quite a few years. Those are great because dad can’t unplug them to plug in a saw or drill and then yell at me when the cows get out.
he was afraid he wouldnt have enough solar panel energy and didnt want to spend an arm/leg on large panels so he went with smaller panels and the batteries.
My pump before the well went dry would lift .25 gallon per minute 400 feet from water to cistern and the cistern was 660 feet away runs of 2 275 watt panels.. its a grundfos pump. Worked good till we'll went dry but I'm not convinced the pump isn't bad and that's why I have no water.
100 feet you can pull yourself so I would be less afraid to try a cheaper pump.
There is a California company that sells kits with everything you need. And about 1/4 price of local companies putting in solar well systems for the FSA office here. A big storage tank helps for cloudy days. Most places instead of batteries will have a generator hookup for backup.
Can you get an old pump jack on the well and pump into a tank? Put a Predator engine on it. Put enough gas in it to fill the tank. When it runs out of gas, it quits.
That’s an interesting idea. Probably be more durable than solar. I was thinking something with a float valve for convenience but I guess a storage tank with a float to the cattle tank would be just about as good.
I think that’s that RPS company I keep coming across. Sounds like a complete system minus the well and tank for $2-3000. I don’t like getting involved with the government grant programs. You have to do it their way and that makes it 3-4 times the money and then they only pay half. Last time I looked into something was for some rotational grazing fencing it was a 3-4 year waiting list and I wanted to do it in a month or two.
Our neighbor was the natural resource guy here. We put a solar system in through a guy that was doing them for local electric coop. Cost us 10.000 before costshare. The rps company is what people here are using. I have done the gas in pumpjack thing and before a windmill just ran full time in same pasture. The solar is the best and least maintenance so far.
I asked them about a solar system a few years ago. I still might go with it, but I am hoping that I can get my windmill back in shape and not have to worry about the solar. Windmills are great for this area, and I have always used them in Nebraska, but my brother bought Dads place, and has put solar on all the wells. He is running bigger groups of cattle and the solar system will pump more constantly than wind, up there. I don’t believe it here though. I’m only on 80 acres and about 5 bovines and 4 equine is all I can run without abusing the ground. The problem with RPS, is once you make contact with them, they won’t take NO for an answer.
That’s why I haven’t contacted them yet. I like to know what I want and not ask them. That’s how you get talked into stuff you don’t need.
I agree with Dale solar has been good for 5 or 6 years it has been in use here. I still have another well site that is a submersible pump powered with a generator. The amount of gas adds up fast. And I just have bad luck with generators running 3 or 4 hours most every day. I have one pump that is on 1 inch black plastic hose. The real old kind the gophers will chew to pieces. Two guys hand over hand can pull a 100 foot or less in 10 minutes. This one has 110 motor my dad special ordered back in the 1990's. It has been in 5 different wells by now. Currently in the shed as back up. So I agree with mader you can put your own pump in. You don't need pump man and his truck for 100 feet or less. I do not know all the specifics about the system I am using. The land owner did it with the FSA cost share. FSA wanted it on the highest hill top around. Not how most farmers would of done it. It was designed to water 80 to 100 cows, so has a 5000 gal tank, and 2, 400 gal troughs. One of them being way up the hill. My son has game cameras on both. No much drinks at the upper. Deer in particle don't go there. There are 60 to 80 cows run on 1200 acres for 6 to 8 months of the years. And so far, a live creek at the opposite end of the 1200 acres (4 different land owners to get the 1200 ac). So not the end of the world if it breaks, but so far nothing has. No battery's, only pumps when the sun is up. It does pump on overcast and rainy days, just a lot slower. I know FSA paid for an extra panel to make sure to get 2 to 300 foot of lift. I have concerns about how the motor handles the sun going down or come up. I hope there is protection to have no juice if the panels are not producing all the motor wants. But since it is a mile from the blacktop. I do leave it on for more than a day if need be.
Here is picture of the setup we had on 480 acres and usually 50 to 60 pairs. If you expand picture you will see the three solar panels. They ran to a controller then a grundfos submersible 3 inch pump capable of higher psi. We had a pipeline run beside the 6000 gal galvinised tank. It was made to push water uphill a hundred some feet and 1800 lineal feet to another tank . We then cross fenced pasture to keep cows in back drier area. You have to expand photo to see panels.
imo you’re best bet is to take your well depth , distance , and elevations and check the pump’s performance against that. the lift will get you going uphill, help you going downhill, and the pipe friction loss hurts the whole way! those things will DESTROY a pump quicker than anything, and you’ll be money ahead if you’re starting from scratch to check em out. just an opinion,
Might just be easier to buy a standard pump and a cheap generator. Put a gallon or two in the generator and run the pump for a short period, generator runs out of gas and the system shuts down, very self limiting. and you have power if you need it for who knows what.
Our homestead bore is a submersible swung on 270 feet of 1 1/4" heavy poly pipe and a safety cable. We pull that over a pair of motorbike wheels (so we don't kink the pipe) with a vehicle - slowly. The same set of wheels handled 520 feet of 2" the day we blew another bore with a big compressor. It has always amazed me that you folk used petrol engines on livestock water points. They have been very largely powered by small industrial diesels here since about the 1940's. A fair few local production brands but no longer. We still have a 1940 7 hp on one bore and a 1955 5 hp on another - both local products. Our eldest son has had a lot to do with waterpoints and pipelines in his career with the cattle industry in NW OZ. Used to be that a new water point meant a new bore hole. Now they run poly pipe big distances from the existing ones with a helical rotor pump and small diesel (commonly Japanese horizontals) running 24/7. And being replaced by solar units. I've seen it mentioned that with dust etc panels are only good for about 10-ish years
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