Suggestions for irrigation system and pump
Hey everyone, this is going to be a bit of a long post so I’d like to say first thank you for any suggestions and help.
My wife and I are taking over her families derelict farm. So far we have added a raspberry patch and started a market garden. We will very soon need irrigation for both. There is already irrigation pipes in place for an old plant nursery. Once ready, we will use the old infrastructure, but for now we just want to add irrigation to the existing pipes.
The raspberry patch is next to the plant nursery infrastructure. However, the market garden is on the other side of the field. We have two option for irrigating it. We can pump water from the plant nursery irrigation system up to a reservoir we will install higher up the field and use a gravity fed system. Or we can pump from a second well on the property. We don’t know the capacity of the wells, but we have been told that the well used for the plant nursery always had ample water. The market garden has 84 beds, 7m longs, that we intend to irrigate with drip irrigation.
Photo 1 - this is the well that supplies the nursery irrigation
Photo 2 - this is the compressor
Photo 3 - the compressor information
Photo 4 - the direction the pipe goes
Photo 5 - around the bend
Photo 6 - straight up here, the raspberry patch is on the left
Photo 7 - 220 raspberry canes
Photo 8 - the first piece of the nursery infrastructure, this is where the raspberry irrigation will be added
Photo 9 - the width of the pipe
Photo 10 - the pipe goes a right angle across the path, and then another right angle and up the right hand side of the path, it irrigates the post and wire area
Photo 11 - the polytunnels are irrigated, this is where the current system ends
The elevation from the well to the polytunnels is 1m and the length of the pipes is 130m with 2 right angles in it.
Photo 12 - from the edge of the polytunnel showing the location the water reservoir would go
Photo 13 - water reservoir location at the top of this bank
Photo 14 - the pipe from the water reservoir would go down along the line of trees in the centre of the photo
Photo 15 - reaching the top of the market garden
The distance from the front of the poly tunnel to where the irrigation pipe going down to the market garden would be is 50m. This is perpendicular to the pipe going down to the market garden. The distance from where the water reservoir would be to the market garden is 55m. We wouldn’t necessarily lay the piping along those measurements, we could lay it diagonally. The elevation from polytunnel to the reservoir location is an additional 4m making the elevation from the well 5m. The top of the market garden is at the same elevation as the polytunnel.
Photo 16 - the second well, which has no current infrastructure
Photo 17 - the direction the pipe would go
Photo 18 - a future herb garden that would be supplied by irrigation if we use the second well
Photo 19 - up to the market garden
Photo 20 - the bottom of the market garden
The second well is 20m from the herb garden and an additional 45m to the market garden, making the total distance 65m. The elevation changes by 1m at the top of the market garden.
The questions we have are:
Should we use the second well for irrigating the market garden or use the gravity-fed irrigation idea?
Would there be a significant difference in cost?
What strength of pump is required for the nursery irrigation (taking into account whether or not the gravity-fed irrigation is added to it)?
What strength of pump is required for the second well?