Even in this time still can we find many farmers and customers don’t understand much about how to make irrigation design and how to save cost on project. Rainfine Irrigation Solution does professional design and we have some experience in this field and want to share with you some ideas to help understand main things in design.
To make irrigation design , some experience and knowledge are required in irrigation equipments, pipe and pumps. Rainfine specialists are professional for the design of center pivot and lateral move system but they don’t do the design for drip irrigation system. They use the best irrigation design software named Model maker with included part Irrimaker. This software uses topographic map from Google earth. Customers send the map of his farm from Google earth (also call it KML file) to Rainfine design team with marked border line of lands in it and also marked the place of water resource in the farm. Using software, Rainfine designers catch image from Google Earth and record all elevation of land from Google earth. Comparing to the traditional way to do the land survey and make topographic map, it saves a lot of time ,labours and money. The topographic map made by software is more accurate as all the data are from satellite image.
These elevation differences are used to calculate the water pressures and also calculate the underground pipeline size. These calculations can be done by the software automatically, which is the most advanced technology in this world.
Example of KML files from google earth after opening and transfer to design program. We can see 3 fields from 3 different farmers which work together to save investment and get water from river to all 3 fields. Fields have mark-up borders and red colour is channel which is under construction to field where will be build dam.
Many designers do design and place irrigation circles in a wrong way. They leave a lot of wasted land between pivot circles. They use end gun at the end of the pivot to reduce wasted land but they don’t think about some other way to place the pivots to save land. For sure maybe more machines will be needed but land will not be wasted and investment will be returned much faster. Farmer wants to make money and any land doesn’t produce crops, it will be a huge waste for him because he has invested money to buy land. Example is on picture below.
Usual design with placed center pivot and wasted land between machines
Correct design to save land and irrigate maximum of land. Using end gun on the end of center pivot we can irrigate nearly all left land.
Most of investors do make mistakes when they start a big project. They try to save money from the way to push the prices from manufacturer down as much lower as possible. But as the matter of fact, the manufacturer is not the one who makes a lot of money. They have very little profit on machines because of the competition. Biggest possible saving is the smart consideration of the complete project from pipeline, pump station and the pivot placing. Designers need to play with pipeline and know the distances and hydraulic to find best options. For example if we have one pipeline with diameter 250mm but long 500m to connect to another one 400mm and long 1000m, we may choose bigger diameter as 250mm because distance is 500m and smaller diameter like 400 in other place where is distance 1000m and save money this way. Irrimaker program runs hydraulic simulation and always tells designers if design is not working or any mistake we made .Irrimaker program can use automatic selection of diameters for pipeline, but with adjusting diameter manually it is possible to save huge money for customers. Designers also need to pay attention on pump station pressure needed in the project. Lower pressure is better as pumps in pump station will be smaller and cheaper . Doing this designers can save huge money for customers.
Other things need to be considered is, if you buy all equipments from different suppliers, you should talk to center pivots manufacturer first and make sure that all equipment will work together. Best way to find manufacturers of valve, pump, pipes is to consult pivot manufacturer as they have experience to choose them. If the pivot manufacturer can help to do the turnkey project, just let them do it .
Many manufacturers have their own suppliers and they can trust them about the quality. Remember, more people and more companies getting involved into the project, more expensive it would be. All companies want to make money and they will add their profit on everything they do. But if pivot manufacturer do turnkey project , they may do many things for you without profit .Because he has got the profit already by selling irrigation machines.
A lot of irrigations designers still use Autocad which is an old design program . Basically they just put circle on land and have to do all pipeline calculation manually and many times these designers have not much experience in irrigation.
Model maker is the best software for irrigation design on market right now . Our company offers this design to our customers. It can calculate pipe sizes and run hydraulic simulation, calculate required pump pressure, even give GPS point for each center pivot. It can calculate required water for machines, end pressure of center pivots, inlet pressure, water hammer protection, friction loss in pipeline, pressures on each valves and more. Also it is possible to export design back to Google earth and give complete design report to customers. This is the most accurate design and can save huge investment for survey on land. After this design, survey work is still needed because Google earth work with accuracy + – 2m . So you need to make sure center pivots don’t hit to each other. Water river survey is needed also as you have to make sure your river has enough water for project.
Pipeline design for one project
Each colour represents different diameter of pipe
Hydraulic test of system in program.
Export it design of center pivots back to Goggle earth.
What else need to be known on the market is that many manufacturers use many different sizes of spans, diameters of pipelines, different goose neck spacing, and different overhang sizes. Our designers use our actual sizes which we have. If you want to design for any other manufacturer’s machines with different sizes, the designer needs to rework the design, because all water requirement, pipeline and hydraulics will be not correct and the system may not work properly which may cause huge money losses. This is actually secure point for us as we offer turnkey project design for free of charge at this moment. We offer free design and supply all irrigation equipments, center pivots, pipes, pumps, valves everything from China with best possible quality. We have our own suppliers who are tested by us because we work with them together for many years.
Thank you for attention.
DaliborTurek .
email:dalibotturek@rainfinechina.com
Phone: 0086-411-8273-1882 / 8272 3239
Fax: 0086-411-8272 3748