This is a long post, so thank you in advance to those of you who read it!
We moved into our house on about 2.7 acres last year. Included with the house was landscaping beds and lawn around the house. We have about 20k sq ft (0.5 acre) of tiffway 419 Bermuda and 21 zones of irrigation to water the beds and the 20ksq ft of Bermuda. We currently use city water for the irrigation and have enough water flow and pressure to run 6 rotors per zone. (we use Rainbird 5000 rotors).
While I have 20k sqft of nice looking Bermuda, the other 2 acres of the property is just native grassy and broad leaf weeds, machinery ruts, and hog damage from before the lot was developed.
I would like to irrigate the entire 2.7 acre lot. Buying city water to irrigate 0.5 acres is already crazy expensive, so drilling a well is in my future. I'll drill a well regardless of my plan to irrigate the entire lot or just irrigating my 0.5 existing Bermuda. Just irrigating 0.5 acres, my well would pay for itself in less than 3 years.
Now you have all the background information. Here are some questions I have.
I've talked to some companies about drilling a well on the lot. All the quotes I've received for a well is for a design GPM of around 25-30 GPM.
To put 1/2" of water on 2.7 acres is about 36,000 gallons. If the well is producing 30 gpm, it would take an irrigation program 20 hours to run. (i water 0.5" twice per week, so I could split the land into 2 different days and run half the zones in the morning on day 1, and the other half on day 2)
It seems the options are to drill a bigger well with more capacity, or build some type of water storage onsite. The 30gpm well could pump into the storage for a long time, and then I could use higher HP pumps to from the storage into the irrigation system to water the whole lot in 5ish hours. Because I don't want above ground tanks, I will need below ground storage, or a pond. Below ground storage seems expensive, but I'm not against spending some money because I think this investment will pay itself off someday. A pond could be pretty nice and would potentially add to the aesthetics of the property.
Are there any other options I'm not considering? What pros and cons do y'all see? With something this size, am I into the scope of getting some golf course fairway rotors?
We moved into our house on about 2.7 acres last year. Included with the house was landscaping beds and lawn around the house. We have about 20k sq ft (0.5 acre) of tiffway 419 Bermuda and 21 zones of irrigation to water the beds and the 20ksq ft of Bermuda. We currently use city water for the irrigation and have enough water flow and pressure to run 6 rotors per zone. (we use Rainbird 5000 rotors).
While I have 20k sqft of nice looking Bermuda, the other 2 acres of the property is just native grassy and broad leaf weeds, machinery ruts, and hog damage from before the lot was developed.
I would like to irrigate the entire 2.7 acre lot. Buying city water to irrigate 0.5 acres is already crazy expensive, so drilling a well is in my future. I'll drill a well regardless of my plan to irrigate the entire lot or just irrigating my 0.5 existing Bermuda. Just irrigating 0.5 acres, my well would pay for itself in less than 3 years.
Now you have all the background information. Here are some questions I have.
I've talked to some companies about drilling a well on the lot. All the quotes I've received for a well is for a design GPM of around 25-30 GPM.
To put 1/2" of water on 2.7 acres is about 36,000 gallons. If the well is producing 30 gpm, it would take an irrigation program 20 hours to run. (i water 0.5" twice per week, so I could split the land into 2 different days and run half the zones in the morning on day 1, and the other half on day 2)
It seems the options are to drill a bigger well with more capacity, or build some type of water storage onsite. The 30gpm well could pump into the storage for a long time, and then I could use higher HP pumps to from the storage into the irrigation system to water the whole lot in 5ish hours. Because I don't want above ground tanks, I will need below ground storage, or a pond. Below ground storage seems expensive, but I'm not against spending some money because I think this investment will pay itself off someday. A pond could be pretty nice and would potentially add to the aesthetics of the property.
Are there any other options I'm not considering? What pros and cons do y'all see? With something this size, am I into the scope of getting some golf course fairway rotors?
