Dealing with water leaks is an annual event on most farms. Every summer as the ground dries out buried irrigation lines are stretched and contorted, joints are wrenched and ageing pipe seams are tested to breaking point. As the saying goes – ‘somethings gotta give!
Water leaks are a normal part of farming life and repairing stock water or irrigation line leaks isn’t exactly rocket science – as long as you know where to find it in the first place that is!
It was this conundrum that brought us to the O’Regan Family Farm. Year after year the problem of tracking down those pesky leaks across twenty paddocks involved trial and error, back breaking hours on the end of shovel, and lots of head scratching. Enter Ground Scan NZ.
Starting at the beating heart of the beast – the pump shed – we set about tracing, locating and marking-out the water pipes across all twenty paddocks. This stage of the project took about ten hours and thanks to the relatively flat topography of the property, we were able to locate ninety-nine percent of the water network using our Ground Penetrating Radar. All told, we had traced more than two kilometers of half-inch PE pipe, terminating each run at one of thirty-two troughs.
For the second stage of the project, our survey crew re-traced the entire network, this time logging GPS data points and line depths at ten meter intervals. This data was then used to produce a Water Network Map (see image) which was presented to our client accompanied by a thorough report detailing GPS annotations and other measurements for their future reference. Another job well done by the team!
As our modern farming practices barrel headlong into the digital age, with its GPS-based management systems, drone weed spraying and Bluetooth controlled gates, having a Farm Water Network Map – a go-to reference when tracing leaks or planning excavation projects – makes a lot of sense. If you would like to know more about how Ground Scan NZ can help make your life easier, get in touch!
