What Habitat Work Did You Do Today?

[Tangler]

Frost seeded a small food plot and the trail/road leading to it.

 

[Telemark]

I can't do anything outside. We're getting a brutal storm in from the North Sea that is just pounding the whole area. Seems like the wet air hits the mountains and shoots up into cold air above. It's been hours of rain, sleet, snow, and howling winds.

 

[ksJoe]

Deluxe! Would love to hear details on the pump outlet and how the water gets distributed

It is a long term work in progress. I've had ideas in mind for a couple years or so. I'm progressing inrecementally as I prove various ideas as good or bad.

Last year a lighting strike fried some of my cat6 network cable going from the blind to POE cameras I use for trail cameras. While retrenching that I put in 20 yards of 3/4" pex from the creek to the clover. That was my small test to see if how things could work before committing too much time to it.

I do not want to attempt normal high pressure irrigation (like residential sprinklers). High pressure means small orifaces, which requires filtering. I think it'd be a never ending fight cleaning filters and nozzles. So my early plan was to just let water dump on the ground from tubing at various points. Then I saw these wobble sprinklers and thought I'd give them a try. Coverage is suprisingly good (around 15 yard diameter circle with fairly even distribution). I think they will likely work out fine, but dumping water on the ground is forever my plan B if it gets annoying.

I have a 120v sump pump laying in the creek bed (laying on the mud bottom). It has no screen on it (about 1" holes around the base for water inlet). So far I've had the wobble sprinkler plug up with a twig, a minnow, and a crawdad. It seems like the biggest problem is things being at or in the pump when I turn it on (like the crawdad and minnow). Once its running, things stay away from it. So if it doesn't plug up in the first 30 seconds, it will run for hours without plugging.

I am deliberately letting some challenges happen in these early phases to get a sense a of how much challenge I have to deal with. That's why so far I have no filtering. I'm thinking I'll drill some 1-2" holes around the side of a 5 gallon bucket with lid, and get some window screen to the bucket with. Then put the sump pump inside the bucket. That should keep the minnows & crawdads out of it.


The early testing has been good, so I'm ready to expand. I took last week off work for a play week at the land. It was my intention during that time to trench 70 yards or so and lay a lot of 3/4" pipe. I got a 500' roll of 3/4 irrigation tubing (just $85 online for 500' of 3/4"!). But the 30 year old trencher broke. After a few failing non-destructive repair attempts, I'll be welding the chain drive sprocket straight onto the hydraulic motor shaft. if that doesnt work I'll buy a new motor and split/compression hub for a proper repair. Once I get past that I'll have 6-8 water outlets. My plan is high volumen low pressure, which means a sump pump. Low pressure means it has larger orifaces, which means less plugging.
I'll be making a manifold (2-4" steel pipe with a bunch of 3/4" threaded bungs welded to it) to attach all the 3/4" pipe to. When its all working I might do a thread on it with detailed pictures.

The blind has 800w of solar panels, 520ah of LiFePO4 batteries, a Reolink 16 channel POE nvr, and 10 or so cameras. I added a big power inverter last year, which allows me to run a pump off it. Running the pump during full summer sun ought to be about equal to the power coming in from the solar, so running it in the morning or evening will draw the batteries down. But I'm thinking on summer mornings I ought to be able to run 3-4 hours in the morning.