Started irrigating

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I've been irrigating my hayfield and pastures for the last few weeks.  That is part of why I haven't been blogging much lately.  I'm tired.

Because of the rains we had the end of June and the beginning of July there was no rush to start irrigating.  And I had a few other things to get done first.  Then the temperatures warmed up a lot and that slowed things down.  

A few weeks ago I had some fillings in dental work.  And the initial Novocain I was given wore off right away.  The second shot of Novocain didn't work as when the dentist started work I could feel it.  A different dose of Novocain worked.  And afterwards when I rode my bicycle home the Novocain really worked as my face was really numb.  A short time later, and after sleeping, the Novocain finally started to wear off.   The next day my gum where the three needles went was still sore from the needle 'pokes'. Due to the heat I then got little done that day laying out pipes.

The newer aluminum mainline pipes that replaced the steel pipes should have made setting up the mainline pipes easier.  But slowing me down was the pipe's hooks and the latches where the hooks went.  There are two types of areas where hooks are latched to.  A "western style" which is flat and is a triangle shaped.  The second is - what I call - a "bump up" style.  The "bump up" style needs a longer hook because of the bump.

"Bump up" style with a long hook

Western style with a shorter hook

This photo shows the two hook lengths.

Almost all of the newer aluminum pipes had a "bump up" style of latch.  And a longer hook on the other end of that pipe.  My older aluminum pipes had a western style of latch and shorter hooks.  It was hard to hook the different pipe styles together as the shorter hooks had trouble fitting securely into the bump up latch.  So I had to replace / switch the hooks between pipes. The longer hooks were moved to the western style pipe ends so that pipe could hook to the bump up pipe.  And the shorter hooks went to the bump up pipe ends as the bump up pipe hooked to a western style of pipe.  *whew*  At least in the future hooking up the mainline pipes will be easier as the hooks are on the right pipes now.

Now that the "new" mainline pipes are all laid out, I am happy that everything (the valve locations) lines up the way it did before.  The mainline total length seems to be the same.  So all my calculations worked.

Also, when laying out the pipes I found this rock in the hayfield.   Rocks can pop out of the ground sometimes.

Friday evening July 12 I finally got all the pipes hooked up.  Time to work on the irrigation pump and the input pipe.  The input pipe is in two sections.  That is because I don't want the plastic pipe in the river in case the river freezes. 

The two pieces are connected by the white "ring" left of the white elbow.

It can be tricky aligning the two pieces together so I can then move the ring to screw the two pipes together.  Add in the fact that the wooden platform is deteriorating making it tricky to stand on safely.  On my to-do list later is to rebuild the wooden platform.  It took a lot of effort connecting the two pipe sections together.  Then later I had to re-do the connection as I hadn't greased or put thread-tape on the thread-ring that screws the two pipes together and apparently it was leaking air when I tried to initially start the pump.

Once the pipes were put together, time to prime the pump and start it up.  The pump wouldn't pressure up.  Over and over I tried.  I tightened the packing ring structure.  The pump still would not pressure up.  Eventually I took the packing ring structure off and found the packing was gone.  Used up, melted, mostly gone.   The packing hadn't lasted from the previous use.

Last year I had to replace the packing: https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2023/08/irrigation-work.html

It was now after 6 pm on a Friday.  The shop where I had gotten the packing was closed. And being a repair shop, wouldn't reopen until Monday morning.  What bad luck.

I then thought of calling Myron, my irrigation guy.  I reached him.  He had some packing.  But he was in Great Falls, Montana for the weekend and wouldn't be back until Monday evening.  But Myron gave me directions on how I could get to some of the packing at his place, and I was able to.

Early Saturday morning I put the packing and packing ring structure onto the pump and was able to start the pump up and get the pressure going so that I could then irrigate.

I wasn't sure if I had used enough packing material as the pump's pressure was around 52-54 pounds.  Normally the pressure is in the low to mid 60s.  But I was happy to get the irrigating going.  I decided to wait until evening when I would move the sprinkler lines, then I would shut the pump off and try to add more packing.  But when evening came I looked and the pump's pressure was now 61-62 pounds.  So I left the pump running.

Now that the irrigation is going, my day is messed up.  I move the sprinkler lines twice a day.  Between 7 to 9 am and then 7 to 9 pm in the evening.  It usually takes me an hour and a half each time to move 28 to 30 pipes.  My sleep habits are different now.  I usually get only 5 hours of sleep at night before moving the pipes in the morning.  Then I sleep again.   Initially sleep was after moving the pipes in the morning.  But now that our temperatures are in the 90s during the afternoon I do work the rest of the morning, eat a full breakfast at noon, then sleep 4 hours in the afternoon from 1 pm to 5 pm.   My work schedule is a mess these days.

Things are finally settling down.  Initially every morning a sprinkler would go bad.  Sometimes it was because some debris or weeds was stopping the flow out of the sprinkler.  I do have one sprinkler that doesn't want to start turning when the water starts flowing, but I move the clapper a bit and then everything starts working.  Other times a sprinkler didn't want to turn around and I would replace the sprinkler head.

One time I replaced the sprinkler head with another one and that one wouldn't work.  It turned out the nozzle flow reducer wasn't in far enough.  It would prevent the clapper from reaching the water flow.  I tried to screw the reducer into the nozzle more.  It was hard to turn.  I couldn't quite get it in as far as needed.  So I took a file and wore down the end enough to let the clapper turn all the way it had to.

One afternoon the pump stopped.   The pump will stop when the temperature is mid-90s or greater.  That day it reached 97 as a high temperature.  The sprinklers were throwing water at 1 pm when I went to sleep.  At 4 pm when I woke up they were not working.  So I waited until 7 pm, when I usually move irrigation lines, to restart the pump.  No sense moving the irrigation lines without a full period of irrigating.

Restarting the pump wasn't smooth.   The pump had cooled down by then, but nothing when I hit the start button.  I tried this.  I tried that. Nothing.  I was ready to give up and tried one more time, and the pump started.  The only difference was that I had the control door open to the electrical panel.  That shouldn't make a difference, but apparently it did.   I left the control door open.

Due to our weather forecast for more hot temperatures I thought I would be in a routine of losing a half day of irrigation.   We had a number more days of upper 90 degrees - and one 100 degree day - of temperatures.   But the pump never stopped any other day.   Knock on wood.  Maybe leaving the control door open helped?

One time I checked and the water pressure was back down to the mid-50s.  I checked the input screen and found a lot of water weed covering it - even though I had cleared away lots of water weeds before starting the pump initially.  I removed the water weeds from the screen and the water pressure went up to 64-65 pounds.

I now have made it across the hayfield and almost back.  Ideally that is all I would like to do. The grass is growing nicely.  But due to our hot and dry weather the ground dries quickly.   I'm not keen on another out and back as that takes about 12 days.  And just going out means I have a long haul to get the pipes back so I can irrigate the pasture.  I made a compromise.  I will go out, but in doing so I will move to every other valve.  Then seeing how the ground conditions are, coming back I will either use the valves I didn't use going out, or all the valves.

Due to the wet grass when moving the pipes I wear my rubber muck boots.   However the boots always crack on the inside arch of my feet.  No matter if the boot is a cheap Walmart boot, or a $150 pair of boots.  The boots only last a year or two before getting a crack.  A crack means leakage of water.   So I wear old soaks and place my feet in plastic bread bags before putting them in the boots.  Still everything gets wet.  After moving the pipes I have to leave stuff out in the sun to dry.

And the fancy boots have a tendency twist the bottom of my pants legs around my ankles and want to pull my pants down.  Why?  I don't know.  I wish it would not do this.   I have to untwist the pants so I can get the pants off of me.  And wear a belt on the pants that I normally don't need to wear a belt on.

Irrigation is good as things are dry.  But moving irrigation pipes is a pain.  Due to the Bonneville power line towers in the hayfield and the trees in my pastures, I can't use a wheel line and must use handline pipes.  I don't think many people use handlines anymore.  I can't wait to be done with irrigating this year.