water storage

[steveaust]

I live in a low rainfall area of western victoria aust. My problem is keeping the water up to my 20 Angus steers, i have 2 dams each holding around 40 thousand gallons. At the moment they are both half full is there any advantage as far as surface evaporation goes by pumping one into the other thus cutting the surface area in half.

 

[jgn]

It seems to me that if you cut your surface area in half you will also cut your evaporation rate in half as well. I'm not sure how quick water will evaporate but if water is at a premium in your area it would probably be worth a try, only exception might be if you couldn't pump the one totally dry because then you'd still have evaporation from both taking place.

 

[Craig-TX]

Evaporation is certainly a considerable factor. Here in Texas the old stock tanks are wide and shallow. Of course many of them were dug with mules and slips. In the past couple of decades the prevailing way to dig them is as deep as possible for the very reason of minimizing evaporation. Before that the bulldozer operators still dug them the old way. I guess that's because the old operators started off driving teams and when they got dozers the old habits died hard. In this area the trickiest part of going deep is getting a good seal. It's not hard to find clay and that clay is spread out over the entire tank. It will hold water like a jug. But when you go too deep each layer of rock is liable to have a spring under it. Water flows in but it also flows out. Sometimes those spots will be hard to seal with clay. We have one tank that's six or seven years old and still won't hold water like it should. We've tried bentonite etc. Each year it gets better as the bottom silts in but it has been a disappointment.

Craig-TX