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West Central Iowa | I am currently in the process of installing such a system with NRCS cost-share. I ordered my pump, panel, & controller through solarpumps.com. Like a previous poster suggested, I am storing extra water instead of having batteries as backup. I will be set up to water about 50-60 head in 4 separate paddocks. Each water tank is 1000 gallons and will serve 2 paddocks. I have designed it with a cistern at the top of the hill that will be made from 2 old NH3 tanks and will hold an additional 3000 gallons. That means when I have cattle in any one paddock there is about 4000 gallons of water available (1000 in tank and 3000 in cistern). A signal wire will run from the pump to the cistern and when the water level starts to drop in the cistern, the pump will kick on and the output on mine is around 1-1.4 gal/min. If it is super hot and the cattle are drinking a lot, I'm assuming the sun will be shining brightly and will pump around 10-12 hours and move around 800-1000 gallons a day conservatively. That's my design that I hope to be installing this coming week.
I will also have the capability, in an emergency, to hook up some sort of transfer pump into my lines and use the same water source to fill/recharge the system quickly when there has been lack of adequate sun or some type of malfunction. Using the solar pump with a backup battery or something would be too slow if/when animals are hot and thirsty and fighting for water at the tank. | |
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Solar livestock watering
