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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8940058
10/20/23 08:30 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Contractor finished up a week ago with the dividing levee and the brush guards around the drain pipes. Power company set the new pole with transformer and provided service. We went out last weekend, connected the service from the power company to our panel, set two more poles with panels, finished setting piles for our deer blind/duck viewing platform, and seeded the rest of the levees. Except for the electrician coming out to install the VFD and program it, we are completely done. Power to meter and graveled a parking lot. Dividing levee finished: Setting pole at center of dividing levee for panel to run power to our East pool blind. Little pucker factor using augur around buried #4 wire that services our VFD and provides power to the pump: Pole set and view of dividing levee North: View looking South from pole in center of dividing levee: Pano shot standing at the intersection of the dividing levee and South levee looking Northeast into the East pool:
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8940061
10/20/23 08:42 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8940068
10/20/23 08:48 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8940076
10/20/23 08:59 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8940101
10/20/23 09:18 PM
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Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,321
jnd59
Pro Tracker
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Cool. I either missed it or forgot since you started, where will you get your water? Is there a river nearby?
No matter how high a duck flies a hammer still breaks a window.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: jnd59]
#8941620
10/23/23 02:44 AM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Cool. I either missed it or forgot since you started, where will you get your water? Is there a river nearby? Creek when we aren’t going thru a historic drought! Hopefully we get some much needed rain this week! (Fingers crossed)
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8941682
10/23/23 04:15 AM
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Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 691
Sinkey
Tracker
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Tracker
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Posts: 691 |
Just curious Barney. With the money you guys are spending. Why not just put a well in and run off electric? Or did I miss that? I’d think over time, the creek irrigation will silt in that pipe. But could be wrong. Love what you guys are doing though. I built mine several years back and it just keeps getting better. We are thinking of expanding and adding more area and another well. But don’t really want to change anything since it’s working.
But watching your post makes me want to levy more more land. Lol.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8943353
10/25/23 04:49 PM
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Joined: Oct 2016
Posts: 104
16ga
Woodsman
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Woodsman
Joined: Oct 2016
Posts: 104 |
3.1" over last 2 days here in South KC. I come here often hoping for water pics. Hope you're getting some.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: Sinkey]
#8943377
10/25/23 05:41 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Just curious Barney. With the money you guys are spending. Why not just put a well in and run off electric? Or did I miss that? I’d think over time, the creek irrigation will silt in that pipe. But could be wrong. Love what you guys are doing though. I built mine several years back and it just keeps getting better. We are thinking of expanding and adding more area and another well. But don’t really want to change anything since it’s working. You did miss it. Water is a premium for agricultural water rights. If you don't currently have a well dug into the aquifer and grandfathered in, you aren't getting granted permission to dig one much less for recreational water rights is my understanding. We are running our pump off electric. Costly in the front end, but will more than pay for itself over the long haul vs a diesel pump and having to babysit it every day or other day. Our wet well is version 2.0 with my partner and his first wetland. A lot of thought and lessons learned went into this design. Our pump can handle 3" solids. The holes in the pipe are 2", so it will eat anything that gets inside our well hopefully. The pipe is 24" off the bottom of the creek and has a fall of 18" from the creek to the inside of our wet well. When the pump is running at max RPM it will clear any silt that gathers in the pipe. Only time will tell is all our planning and lessons learned were correct or not. You only know what you know right? Also, we went in to this knowing on dry years we might not have enough water to pump to hunt. Based off historical records that would be every 1 out of 10 years. On the flip side, if we were on a major river then you are going to get your crops flooded out ever 1 out of 10 years or more and not having anything to hunt. Not to mention all the levee repair from the flooding. As my buddy says, your greatest asset is your greatest liability as well. This is property #3 my partner is involved in. One of the 3 is on a major river that should always have water. The other two are on creeks that won't have water during dry years, but hopefully won't flood during wet years. Between the 3 the thought is all the owners can be generous enough to always have quality hunting. But watching your post makes me want to levy more more land. Lol. I'm hoping I can be involved in one more project about this size. Been a great experience. Always nice to see your sweat equity pay off and hopefully leave something valuable your kids/grand kids can enjoy for years.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: 16ga]
#8943381
10/25/23 05:44 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8965972
12/02/23 02:44 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8968759
12/06/23 04:26 PM
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Joined: Oct 2016
Posts: 104
16ga
Woodsman
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Woodsman
Joined: Oct 2016
Posts: 104 |
I'd probably already had a spread out in that water you backed up in the woods.
Looks awesome.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8968772
12/06/23 04:44 PM
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Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 36,320
Guy
THF Celebrity
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Month or so ago we knew we had missed the window of the native grass seed germinating and growing, so we over seeded the levees with winter wheat. Nice to see some growth with the trace amounts of precipitation we were getting. Maybe you will get some snows on there, they love that winter wheat.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8969733
12/08/23 04:47 AM
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Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 7,973
Team Hillbilly
THF Trophy Hunter
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THF Trophy Hunter
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Posts: 7,973 |
AwesomeJob you guys have done. which County are is this in if you don't mind my asking
Team Hillbilly I started out with nothing and I still have most of it left. Paralyzed Veterans of America
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: Team Hillbilly]
#8969998
12/08/23 08:54 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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AwesomeJob you guys have done. which County are is this in if you don't mind my asking Thanks. Woodson
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8973820
12/16/23 05:31 PM
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Joined: Sep 2013
Posts: 51
aggiehunter15
Outdoorsman
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Outdoorsman
Joined: Sep 2013
Posts: 51 |
This is beyond impressive. The attention to detail and foresight is quite commendable. That first greenhead is going to be such a sweet feeling all said and done.
Several questions:
What have the financials of this scale of a project looked like? Don't want to pry too much of your personal dollar and cent investment but more along the lines of "property was x% of total investment and improvements made up y%."
Are yall planting and maintaining the corn yourself? Or do you have an agreement with a local farmer? This may have already been discussed but I found myself having to skip over most mention of "corn" to actually follow the property development aspect...
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: aggiehunter15]
#8975646
12/20/23 01:26 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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This is beyond impressive. The attention to detail and foresight is quite commendable. That first greenhead is going to be such a sweet feeling all said and done. Appreciate that and yes several of us are very much looking forward to the first time we can get in the blind and kills some ducks. My son especially. What have the financials of this scale of a project looked like? Don't want to pry too much of your personal dollar and cent investment but more along the lines of "property was x% of total investment and improvements made up y%." Well, I can tell you it hasn't been cheap. I haven't really thought of it in terms of overall percentages, but sitting her roughly going over numbers. All in turn key the price of the land was roughly 66% of the final cost with the development we did being 34%. Had our grant been funded those percentages would have drastically changed as we would have been refunded dollar for dollar on our development. We are in round 2 applying for a different ground with $0.50 on the dollar being funded. Also looking into an endowment. There are options out there to reduce the cost. Are yall planting and maintaining the corn yourself? Or do you have an agreement with a local farmer? This may have already been discussed but I found myself having to skip over most mention of "corn" to actually follow the property development aspect... The previous owner is a farmer. Due to personal circumstances with him needing money, he had to sell the farm. So it ended up being a good deal for him as we aren't farmers. He still gets to run his cattle on the land in the winter and cash rent the farm ground from us. In trade, he plants and maintains the corn in our wetland for us. Works out for both parties in the end.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8981587
01/03/24 03:27 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Update: The last piece to this puzzle was the VFD. We had ordered the VFD back in August with specific requirements on what we wanted. Come to find out the electrician over promised and under delivered. They were quite as familiar with the programming as they made us believe. It really wasn’t too big of a deal as we had no water to pump anyway until we finally got a big rain right before Christmas. We lost the potential to pump several acre feet of water; but they finally installed the VFD so we could run the pump. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to see water finally discharging into our wetland. At max speed, we can pump 850-900 gallons/min as long as we have that much or more flow in the creek. At the time of install, there wasn’t enough flow in the creek to run at max frequency, but we did verify our inlet design and low water crossing. If the creek is flowing at any rather under 900 gallons/minute, once programmed correctly our pump won’t let on drop of water by which is a major win. Lots of planning and lessons learned went into this. Was nice to confirm the design worked. The bummer was we couldn’t leave the pump on and in standby mode waiting for another rain as we weren’t confident the parameters in the pump were programmed correctly to keep from damaging the pump. Our suspicions ended up being correct, and I’m glad we turned the pump off.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8981590
01/03/24 03:38 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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Finally the week before Christmas, we got some good soaking rains in the area that saturated the ground and gave us good run off into the creek. The problem was the pump was on and in standby so it could immediately start pumping when it sensed water in the creek, so we lost a day of pumping until my partner could get out to the pump to turn it on. Water over the low water crossing at this level is around 2000 gallons/min or more, so we can run wide open without a problem. After 3 days of pumping, the wetland was starting to look like a wetland! Since we weren’t convinced the programming was correct, we keep going back each day to check the level of the creek. I think this was day 3 of pumping, but you can see the water has come down. Still enough flow to run wide open.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8981592
01/03/24 03:53 PM
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 4,209
BarneyWho
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By day 4 running at max speed, we had pumped 11 acre feet of water which is around half of what we need to fill our smaller “west pool”, but at 11 acre feet it puts enough water in front of our blind to hunt and floods corn! By the 4th day, the creek flow had slowed down to around 450 gallons/min. The good news was the pump had slowed to match the flow of the creek. It’s hard to tell here, but if you look at the right hand side of the pic you can see the water running in, but you can obviously tell by the inlet pipe being visible the pump isn’t letting any water by our low water crossing. At this point we checked some parameters on the VFD and confirmed our suspicions that the pump wouldn’t operate correctly if the flow of the creek slowed below the lower limit of our pump. In stead of going into standby the pump would just cycle off and on as the pit would fill with water which is not what we want. So, at this point we weren’t comfortable leaving the pump on and again lost some water that night as it was trickling over the low water crossing by the time we returned the next day. This time we had someone with us familiar with VFDs that helped us figure out which parameters were set wrong and how to change them. We finally got to a point where we feel comfortable leaving the pump on to come out of standby mode when there is enough water to pump and going back into standby when it’s pumped all the available water. We were able to confirm this by putting a camera in the discharge pipe. You can tell even though there’s no water coming out of the pipe at some point the pump has cycled on and off. Still some more things to work out with the VFD, but at least at this point we won’t lose any more water down stream when we get a rain. Now all we need are ducks and more water!
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8981754
01/03/24 09:32 PM
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Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 981
DUKFVR
Tracker
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Tracker
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 981 |
This thread is beyond Great! Such a fabulous project. Congrats to y'all.
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8982056
01/04/24 03:18 PM
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Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 19,974
Judd
#1 Creedmoor Fan
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#1 Creedmoor Fan
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 19,974 |
The pump setup is awesome...very impressive.
Don't let your ears hear what your eyes didn't see, and don't let your mouth say what your heart doesn't feel
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: Judd]
#8982098
01/04/24 05:49 PM
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Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 62,026
BOBO the Clown
kind of a big deal
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kind of a big deal
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 62,026 |
The pump setup is awesome...very impressive. think its cool now!!! Just wIt until the 55 gal drum of Bubble bath I just ordered shows up!
Bottom line, never trust a man whose uncle was eaten by cannibals.-Sen Joni Ernst
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Re: Wetland Project
[Re: BarneyWho]
#8982196
01/04/24 09:09 PM
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Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 19,974
Judd
#1 Creedmoor Fan
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#1 Creedmoor Fan
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 19,974 |
Venmo sent for 1/2
Don't let your ears hear what your eyes didn't see, and don't let your mouth say what your heart doesn't feel
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