Solar Water System.

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Randi

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Saskatchewan, Canada
We invested in this system to water cows. It is a Kelln system with an insulated 750 gallon fiberglass trough that we brought up from the USA. We also have a 800 gallon summer trough that we can use with it.

Mostly, the need was to water cattle on our main fall pasture. There is a spring there, but the water is poor, and it is pretty unreliable. Some years it runs well, some years it doesn't run. So, we dug the well, 27' deep and 10ish gal per min. We watered 170 cows on it after weaning, until Dec 23.
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On Dec 23 we moved those cows home, and added another 80 that had been on a different pasture. We also moved the water system to the winter pasture, as there is a good well there, and no-one likes chopping holes in the ice....

The ones that had been on the water system, were very impatient with us, they knew what the trough meant. And they had access to the creek where they normally drink.
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So far, we are really loving the system, a couple of minor glitches, the supply line froze one day, shortly after we installed it, there was a dip in it, and the water didn't all drain back.

We had to charge some batteries, once, because apparently, on the longest, and coldest days of the year, when the sun didn't shine at all....with 250 cows drinking on it, the batteries will run out. Now, we have 2 sets of batteries, and keep the extras charged. We only had the problem on 1 day, and it has been good since. Fortunately we don't get many long stretches of cloudy weather.

And finally, today, when we checked it, it was running over. Had been for a while, by the looks of the ice. This was a pretty simple fix, the cord to the pill float was stuck in some ice....
 
That is pretty cool. I am glad we do not have that much cold weather here in Texas.

In that second picture it appears that the cattle could walk on things and break them since there is no fence stopping them. Do you have any problems with that?
 
Bullitt":1x69f6ik said:
In that second picture it appears that the cattle could walk on things and break them since there is no fence stopping them. Do you have any problems with that?
Cattle, breaking things?? Never :cowboy:
 
i've had my float stuck in the ice several times in this very cold weather.

not sure what would remedy that ?
 
That looks great, I have had my eye on one of their portable systems to use at dugouts in the pastures in order to keep them out the the dugout. I think cleaner water would be advantageous for calf gain and health, as well as make the dugouts last longer.
 
Bullitt":3grpj4p5 said:
That is pretty cool. I am glad we do not have that much cold weather here in Texas.

In that second picture it appears that the cattle could walk on things and break them since there is no fence stopping them. Do you have any problems with that?
We were just in the process of setting things up. Got it set up to start pumping quickly, so the the trough would fill up before all the cows got there. There's a fence around it now.
 
ddd75":2788e5vc said:
i've had my float stuck in the ice several times in this very cold weather.

not sure what would remedy that ?

I'm not sure. We havent't had a problem, even when it was really cold. And I'm not really sure why we did this morning. As it's only been getting down to about -10 C the last few days. There's enough water going through the trough and it's well enough insulated, that we have not had ice on the inside of the trough.

This morning the wire from the pill float was stuck in some ice and the water hadn't shut off. I'm not sure if it was the fact that the wire was stuck, or if the pill float just hadn't switched.
 
Silver":2axdh8hm said:
That looks great, I have had my eye on one of their portable systems to use at dugouts in the pastures in order to keep them out the the dugout. I think cleaner water would be advantageous for calf gain and health, as well as make the dugouts last longer.

This one is set up for wells, I am not certain if we could use it in a dugout.

But as far as watering into a trough from a dugout, we had great success this summer doing just that. We just had a gas pump, pumped into a big 1200 gallon tank and had it set up to gravity flow into our 800 gallon trough on a float system. We were watering about 25-30 cows, and the water would last for 2-3 days. The dugout was not fenced, and the cows never once went into the dugout, once they realized they could drink out of the trough.
 
Thanks for the information. We are looking to dig a new well and will need it to run via solar power.
 
For what it's worth....I have 4 Grundfos and 2 Lorentz solar systems. The Lorentz's are far superior to the Grundfos as far as pumping in low light-cloudy-weather. The Grundfos seems to require nearly total cloud free sun. I will install more Lorentz systems but no more Grundfos. As far as durability, the Grundfos have been in wells longer and have been trouble free. The Lorentz were installed this past summer. Lorentz have the ability to send pumping information to a cloud and if you subscribe to their service, you can get that info on your phone. You can also turn the pump on and off from your phone through this service.
 
The Kelln system is also phone accessible. But i don't know how it works yet, I've not looked into that part of the system yet.
 
Chocolate Cow":2fn16bo5 said:
For what it's worth....I have 4 Grundfos and 2 Lorentz solar systems. The Lorentz's are far superior to the Grundfos as far as pumping in low light-cloudy-weather. The Grundfos seems to require nearly total cloud free sun. I will install more Lorentz systems but no more Grundfos. As far as durability, the Grundfos have been in wells longer and have been trouble free. The Lorentz were installed this past summer. Lorentz have the ability to send pumping information to a cloud and if you subscribe to their service, you can get that info on your phone. You can also turn the pump on and off from your phone through this service.

Do the systems have comparable sized panels?
 
The Lorentz have 2 panels each. Two of my Grundfos have 4 panels. One has 1 panel and one has 2 panels. The Lorentz panels appear to be better panels for collecting low light. The Lorentz panels looks very different from the Grundfos panels.
 

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