Troubleshooting
Get your pivot ready for spring
A little time spent evaluating center pivots now will pay big dividends next growing season. — Steven Melvin —
W
inter is an ideal time to get the pivot ready for the upcoming irrigation season. With harvest out of the way, it’s a less busy time of year on
most farms, as well as for pivot dealers.
This is also a great time to take advantage of the seasonal service specials offered by many dealers. In addition, the time it takes to order parts now is less critical than in the summer.
The key to achieving top performance from a pivot is to focus on getting uniform water application across the field with the lowest possible energy usage. Achieving this goal requires the system be designed correctly in the first place and then maintained properly. The operator’s manual that came with the pivot is a good place to start when looking for the usual maintenance requirements. A few additional items that need to be evaluated include system operating pressure, energy usage and the sprinkler package.
All-important system pressure
The pressure is the single most important indicator that the system, from pump to sprinkler, is functioning properly. First, the design pressure must be known, and second, an accurate means of measuring the pressure must be available. The design pressure can be found in the sprinkler chart, which should have been provided with the paperwork that came with the pivot. If it has been lost, the dealer that sold the sprinkler package should be able to provide a new copy.
Pressure gauges are a good tool for reading the pressure, but they need to be replaced fairly often. Make sure each
20 Irrigation TODAY | January 2019
pivot has a working gauge or pressure transducer before the start of the next irrigation season.
Decrease energy usage
One diagnostic method that can be used to evaluate energy usage is to compare the amount of energy used by the pumping plant this past year to the amount of water applied to the field.
The technique uses the amount of energy used, the pressure at the pump discharge, the lift from the water source to the pump discharge, and the volume of water pumped. The procedure then compares the efficiency of your system to that of a properly designed and maintained pumping plant, which helps determine how much money could be saved if the system is improved.
The method is simple and quick to complete, and it can be done from the warmth of the office. Specific information and instructions for evaluating your system is available in the University of Nebraska’s new Center Pivot Irrigation Handbook, EC3017 (chapter 7, pg. 84). It can be downloaded for free at http://extensionpublications
.unl.edu/assets/pdf/ec3017.pdf.
These tests were conducted on 165 systems in Nebraska and 200 systems in North Dakota and showed that an average fuel savings of about 30 percent could be achieved if the systems were brought up to the standard. It is worth reiterating that 30 percent was the average savings, signifying that half of the systems could save more — and some, a lot more.
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