Country Lane Caretakers

 

Case Study

 

A small property subdivided from a former sheep grazing operation. This subdivision has no direct access to flowing water. It does have a bore and surface water courses that flow, after rain, to dams.

 

The property now has limited to zero commercial carrying capacity for stock, due to poor land management practices and unsustainable business model of previous landholders.

 

The rainfall, although low, has historically been seasonally consistent with periods of drought.

 

A legacy of poor, outdated, inappropriate or inefficient infrastructure leaves the property with limited productivity. These factors combined to make the property available below previous valuations.

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Water: addressing just one issue

 

Water is a key issue in mind where generational and historically poor land management practices, poor water usage, inefficient storage and movement, inaccurate water allocations based on flawed assumptions and calculations, increased drought events, totally lacking government and legislative levers, down to criminal conduct (water stealing, illegal accounting & storage practices) and neglect, have resulted in many properties without water.

 

Landholders, especially at the smaller scale, may need to become completely water self sufficient through water capture, reticulation and recycling, reuse and repurposing, and other on-site treatment strategies.

 

By improving the current water supply or increasing water availability on site, you may increase the amount of income diversification opportunities.

 

Address any range of other issues and even more opportunities may arise.

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Where to start? In this case study solution?

 

Start adding more and more storage tanks, elevated where possible. Building to large scale 200 000L tanks

 

Start small with drums or tanks with 1000-5000L collecting from every roof area.

 

These small tanks can be cost effective on a budget, easily installed and require minimal expertise to get up and running.

 

Your vegie garden, pets and stock will thank you for it! Crystal clear, sediment free rain water!

 

Build up from there. Locate larger tanks on elevated land and pump from your smaller tanks. Rely on gravity for your household and firefighting needs where possible.

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Calculate the potential water supply on your property.

 

For every 1mm of rain, every square metre of roof can collect up to 1 Litre!

 

1mm rain x 1m2 roof area = 1 Litre

 

Eg average of 200mm rainfall per year on a 10m2 small shed = 2000L / year

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(1in of rain for every square feet of roof area = 0.623 gallons)

 

Your pets / stock will thrive on clean and clear rainwater rather than old style dams. Dams lose much of their capacity through seepage and evaporation. Tanks eliminate these loses.

 

 

Many people don’t budget the water resource they have. By using the above calculation you can work out a maximum amount available. You will still have losses and inefficiencies. So the above is the maximum.

 

Work out, for example your water budget for toilets, laundry showers / baths, drinking cooking how much water each dish washing uses!

 

Number of people, quantity in litres per use, flush, laundry load, shower etc number of uses

 

eg 1 person x 1 flush x 8L x 365 = 2 920L per year…if they only flush once a day!

 

Across a family, accounting for all use, this can be a staggering amount if you get all your water from variable quality river flows and rainfall.

 

Think about major water savings with dry, composting and worm farm toilets or fitting, or retro-fitting, grey water use for toilets.

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I read somewhere,

 

'... that we can not consider ourselves

in water shortage

while ever

we wash our clothes, our cars,

and flush our toilets

with clean, clear, treated,

world standard, drinking water...'

 

 

To me, it's like using "bottled water" to flush toilets or fill a washing machine... !