Please share off grid related fruit growing support devices.
Irrigation -
Pump up to a maximum of 1 litres per second (3,600 litres per hour)
Maximum suction depth: 7m
Maximum total head: 15m
Horizontal discharge: Up to 500m
The other obvious off grid system I can think of is an electric fence, but we already have dedicated threads for that.
I’ve considered using a hydraulic ram pump in order to harvest water from my creek and pump it the 50 vertical feet necessary to be able to irrigate my fruit trees.
This was the explanation I searched out in order to understand how it actually works.
When the videos started showing up in my YouTube feed even before a friend mentioned the pump to me they always seemed to be clickbait. My friend (trained civil engineer) assured me that the principle was sound, and to check them out.
Water hammer is very much a real phenomenon. We use plastic frame/stainless gate valves by the brand Valterra for our treatment ponds at work. If you close them quickly it can crack the pipe or the valve frame as my boss discovered years ago first hand. The response from a fast close can backfeed a huge amount of energy through the system and burps a ‘glug’ of water from the normal outlet risers in our ponds.
I myself have seen the effects of water hammer when the installation of a new kitchen faucet with an electronic sensor that shuts off the flow ended up causing the ABS housing of an inline water filter to crack.
Putting the high kinetic energy of a large water column which is in motion to work in order to pump a smaller volume of water uphill just makes such good sense.
Yes. It’s not like you would be trying to pump the entire stream uphill, you only need a small percentage for irrigation. Plus most of that water would end up back in the water table and back to the stream. Also consider an actual hydroelectric pico-generator. Being off grid they are completely legal to operate. Going grid tie is a nightmare of bureaucracy and permitting for hydropower for reasons we won’t discuss on this thread.
Yes, I’ve definitely considered what I could do to build a low dam on my ~330 feet of creek to have a source of electricity generation where I don’t have a grid tie. The added benefits are that I could increase the present fish habitat and grow some beautiful water lilies.
Very cool thank you for sharing!
We don’t have a creek or a well, we get water delivered about once a year from a private party and also collect rain water.
Do you have any recommendations on solar electric fences? I’m going to need to protect our Apple orchard, which will be out of view from our homestead base camp.
We use a Joolca pump to transfer rainwater into our storage barrels, and the energy from that comes from either our little Massimo or one of our goal zero solar generators, which we fill up using a mobile solar panel cart and on cloudy days or during blizzards we use a gas generator from harbor freight. I highly recommend that little gas generator, it’s not even noisy and half the price of Honda. Starts up every time last three years.
We have a fantastic off grid security system. One is we have solar security cameras that actually really work you can put them wherever you want because they don’t have to be hooked up to wiring. We have been using them for three years now and none have failed on us yet. Combine that with two half Belgian Malinois and half German Shepherd loose dogs with SpotOn collars that can roam our entire 38 acres but not leave. They are our alert system, our security system and fantastic companions. We have seen a lot less squirrels and deer since we got them, which is another plus for our garden and fruit trees.
My husband has invented some solutions to problems like batteries getting too cold to take a charge. I don’t know if anyone else has that problem.
We don’t have a house, but we have a decent size tent, and a few nice little sheds that are as big as they can be without needing a permit.
Some days are easier than others, but I still haven’t regretted being out here, especially hearing everyone complaining about their PG&E bills, so I’m so glad that we don’t even need them for electricity. I like being in control of my own resources.
Also here in Northern California I heard insurance companies are leaving and locally where I live people say they are getting dumped by their insurance companies. Well we don’t have a house to insure, so we don’t have to worry about that either. Also, I heard my county passed metering agricultural wells, so I am sure it’s just a matter of time they will be doing that to personal wells.
This thread is fantastic for electric fence information.
I have not messed with solar in awhile. But i was eyeing a diaphram volume pump that was good for 72 foot head pressure. If you were building a water tower for an orchard; it would be a nice miserly solar powered doololly.
As I’ve been discussing with @Audi_o_phile that would also be a viable route for pumped water storage to use the head pressure for electricity generation on the way back down… Lots of options if one is creative.
It doesn’t have to be fancy either…
It all depends on the flow rate and volume you require. In the laundry business we have machines that quietly fill dump rinse tanks using these very low power 12V submersible diaphragm pumps. Others of the same kind shift water forward in the wash array.
In our Tunnel washers we offered Sunpump arrays. Back then it was 3 72" panels running one 23ft./head pump at 5gpm. 75W or there abouts. So with a minimum 8 pump system you had 24 panels up top.
It sounds like you are much more familiar than I am with this kind of stuff. I figured a small pump running in reverse like this could trickle charge a battery bank. Not a lot of oomph, but enough to not waste the energy going down the pipe and make it worthwhile.
Yeah, something like that is considered dynamic braking. Probably not worth the effort
