The violet line near the top is a pipeline running from the Minnesota Ditch over there on the right side of the frame, delivering water collected up on Mount Lamborn and conveyed by gravity. The ditch, when it's running (usually sometime in April/May), is divided by a weir according to a precisely calculated placement.
The water eventually runs downhill to a pump house over on the left side of the frame, adjacent to a storage pond. The pump lives at the junction of the violet line and the yellow line on the banks of that pond and an overflow stream. There the water starts it's long journey uphill again in the yellow pipeline. Head pressure will take the water back up again to somewhere just below the lower pipe, midway in the field, but the pump is necessary to push it all the way up to the top, where it was formerly used to flood irrigate the field. As I see it, that would have sent a lot of water off to the sides of the central ridge, and off the property altogether.
I'll use the system as it stands in conjunction with the top swale to initiate the planting of trees, but I'm hoping I won't have to depend on it for long into the future. If I can infiltrate water at the top of the property, I can start to build the earthworks necessary to get it where it needs to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment