irragation

Hello My name is Danny Boosten i Have a farm in south Hungary poesta means flat gras plains and i am looking for ecological ways to harvest water i already found lots of information grey water roof water swales etc my question is does any one have experiance with windmills as it is now most of my mony goes to the electric company to power the pumps are windmils financiale better than electric pumps and storing the water is a big decision to metal tanks large pond ?i can't make up my mind
Any help or information wil be welcome

Hello Danny

Congratulations on your decision to go to a more green and sustainable lifestyle. First off lets address wind mills, power and low finance up-cycling.

I stress up-cycling for two reasons... A: Keep items out of the landfill and B: Save money with a little elbow grease.

Vertical wind mills take less foot print to operate and if designed properly operate on little breeze and do even better if strong winds exist. A vertical can be built from scrap PVC pipes and Tin or Aluminum Stove pipes. When connected to a alternator from a old car or water pump they can provide a constant charge to batteries or circulate water with no sun present. When combined with Solar the charge can be constant 24Hrs a day.

Again a water pump, Alternator and Batteries can be salvaged from various sources to get started and later as you save money from being unconnected you can improve the components.

Since your located on grass plains the water level may be high enough to easily drill your own well however rain water en-catchment techniques as well as grey water recycling are all very good alternatives and to be honest I would implement all the alternatives to be sure you have options depending on circumstances. If you pump the water to tower you can utilize gravity to feed your irrigation and household water. I would also encourage you to research solar distillation to purify your drinking water. (Solar Distillation is very easy and again the parts can be easily up-cycled and gathered)

As far as water storage my personal preference is a combination of a water tower for the gravity feed and if designed right it can also be fit to solar distill your drinking water as well as a pond storage for irrigation water storage.

The reason I suggest a pond for irrigation water is my fondness for Aquaponics. You can raise fish in the pond and pump the nutrient rich water (Fish Poop) to your fields for added nitrogen. Aquaponics setups are normally above ground (Grow Beds) without soil since the plants claim the nutrients and cleanse the water to be reused in the fish tanks. However no matter if you grow in earth, a hot house or above ground grow beds the added nutrients only help to grow organically rather than add fertilizers.

All of these ideas and many "Do It Yourself" videos are on my face book page free if you would like more information. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thinking-Outside-The-Box/330603263682894?ref=hl

Good luck... I hope I gave you a few ideas

Mark

Thanks a lot for al the information Mark
I wil check your site soon I have watched the pdc course 10 times and i am realy enthousiastic i tried farming the old fasion way for 2 years and there is just no fun or mony in it I now spend most my time making compost instead of digging it in the ground and making woodchips it is realy rewarding to see my ground qualaty change and i have some big worms that i have never seen here before when i bought my farm my neighbor was using half my land with a tractor to get mony crops like rape seed and maise its going to be interesting to fix this the land the tractor raped is half a meter lower than my gras land from wind erosion !!!
I think the cheapest and easiest way is a vertical windmil with rope pump i found build plans from unaversaty studants but they only built models to test their theorie rope pumps are wel and vertical windmils to but together i can't find a real working construction that has to have a reason in my eyes and for water storage a lot of farms here have a bove ground ponds with plastic we only have sand ground here and a litle lime i think its lime its what our houses here are made from but there is not enough to make a real pond or dam This is the 3 year drought and when i mean drought i mean like african landscape no water in the winter either my wels are drying out !
Anyway thanks for listening Enough complaining lets build something that always makes me feel better

Szia