You don’t always need a pump!

Discussing alternative watering with farmers is always an enjoyable challenge.  From crofters in the Western Isles, to large scale dairies in the Southwest, the needs of everybody, site and situation are different, but Farming and Water Scotland is here to help everyone.   

There is no one size fits all solution to alternative watering.  However, when we talk to farmers about alternative watering, the initial question is almost always regarding the same element of an alternative watering system – the pump. There are a huge range of options when it comes to moving water, there’s solar pumps, RAM pumps, nose powered pumps, wind powered systems to name but a few.  Many forget that the most effective system for watering livestock when not using a watercourse is to fit a mains supply.  Sometimes this is easy, often it requires an investment in a few hundred metres of water pipe and/or an arrangement with a neighbour.  While mains is ideal, for many mains is simply not an option. However, there may be another way of watering your stock without investing in and relying on an expensive pump.  

Isaac Newton first explained his theory of gravity in the 17th century.  Let’s keep Isaac Newton in mind when designing an alternative watering system. Water flows down the hill, if the source is higher than the outlet, you won’t need a pump.  On top of this, water will always find a hydrostatic equilibrium – water finds it’s own level.  So if you have a sealed water pipe, water can actually be pushed up a hill till it reaches the level of it’s source.  Many of us are used to this with gravity fed water tanks in the loft in the house.  However, we tend to forget about it when we are designing alternative watering systems.   

Whether you are pumping or not, you will need a robust abstraction point from a reliable source.  Farming and Water Scotland have developed several resources on correct abstraction sites. If you can find a suitable site for abstraction as high as possible on your land, it might surprise you where you can make water run to without a pump, in many cases, you wouldn’t believe it possible. Start with an Ordinance Survey map and look at the contour lines, mark on it where your abstraction point then follow the contour lines to see where you could get water to.  The wheels come off if at any point your pipe goes above the height of the abstraction point and obviously the pressure is greater the lower the outlet is.  However, with some careful thought and planning, you may be able to develop a system that doesn’t need a pump, while seemingly pushing water up the hill.   

The downsides are that you may need to abstract from a more remote location and you will likely need to spend more money on pipes.  However, you will not need to spend money on consumables, batteries, panels, motors etc. Isaac Newton will not let you down, rain, hail or shine, gravity will ensure water finds it’s own level, so provided you can fit a high enough abstraction point with access to a decent supply of liquid water, you will have the one of the most robust alternative watering system available.