Sand Media Filtration for Drip Irrigation
Damian and Kevin take a look at the different types of filtration available for drip irrigation systems while at the NutraDrip booth at Farm Progress Show. In this segment we learn about Sand Media filtration.
00:00 We're answering the concern that maybe you have, you're thinking about putting in a subsurface drip irrigation system, and you're like, but my water quality sucks. Maybe I can't get a well drilled, 00:10 I've got sediment in my water. Never fear extreme Ag is here with Kurt Grim of, uh, Nutri Drip. And the thing is, 00:16 we're in this trailer here at Farm Progress Show where you've got a bunch of different filtration systems and you're gonna walk us through all of it. 00:22 What am I leaning on and Kevin leaning on right now? Sure. So this is a sand media filter. 00:27 So basically what's happening here is the dirty water's coming in the top. These filters are filled up about three fours full of sand. 00:33 It doesn't have to be dirty Water, but our source water, our source water, which Could be 00:36 Dirty, It could be Dirty uhhuh, It could be dirty, more than likely will be. Um, so it's gonna go down through the bed of sand, 00:41 and then the clean water's gonna come out the bottom. There's gonna be multiple of these tanks set beside each other, and we're gonna monitor pressure in and pressure out. 00:49 When that pressure differential gets to a set point of say, seven pounds of differential, it's gonna back flush. 00:54 This is a self-cleaning filter, um, that might clean itself every 30 minutes. It might clean itself every 30 hours, depending on how dirty the water is. The 01:01 Person could compare this almost loosely to a swimming pool filter. A swimming pool filter has a real similar, uh, 01:06 Similar concept. Yes. So One of the concerns that people have, and you pointed it out, is they, you said before we hit record, folks worry about the, 01:16 where the water comes from and therefore think I can't use subsurface drip irrigation. 01:20 Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, everybody wants, they think they gotta have clean water to run through the drip tape, but the, the technology that we have today, and you know, 01:30 a lot of this stuff's been around a long time, Kurt, and we just, we got better ways of using it now and more automation to use it. But, you know, 01:37 we can do so many things. My neighbors in produce, they had several of these on a trailer and, uh, he had really good luck. But when the river would get muddy and we, and we didn't get the rain, 01:47 it rained upstream and we needed to irrigate, you know, you was limited 'cause you're, you're dirty water coming in and was just too much for it to clean 01:56 out, keep Damaging, keep the dirty water coming in. It's not Necessarily dirty water when the, when the river's muddy, it's dirty. 02:02 It's dirty water coming in. Okay, so quick and dirty on this. You just told me how it works. Is there anything we didn't cover? 02:06 Because we're gonna go to the next filter. So Just think of a sand media filter as a, and the disc filter, which we're gonna show you next as a multi-layer filtration. Yep. 02:14 So essentially that water has to pass through every layer of that sand, which is, is better than a screen. 02:20 So a lot of people think about a screen filter. Yep. It's just a single layer of protection. This is called depth filtration because that water has to work its way all the 02:28 way down through that sand, and that's gonna catch all the big particles that would potentially plug up a drip 02:32 System. Kurt, last question before we hit record. You said there's folks that think that I can't pull water out of a pond Creek River. Kevin just talked about it. This filter system will work for, uh, 02:43 surface WA water coming out of a pond, lake Reservoir River. Right. As a matter of fact, 02:48 it's easier to remove silt and algae than it is a well that has high iron. That's actually more difficult. We can do it, but it's more difficult. 02:55 It requires some chemicals. Is this our base level type of a filter? It is. This is kind of our go-to filter. 02:59 This is what probably 90% of the systems we install get got. Let's move on to the next 03:03 One. One, one more thing. We have different size of tanks. So people look at this and they think, oh, this is big, 03:07 but we actually have tanks that are only 16 inches diameter, so we can do different size. It's a, 03:11 it's a modular system for different size of feet based on How many acres, how much farm, pushing the water, et cetera. Okay. 03:16 We're ready to move on to the second kind. Well, before we go to the disc filter, let's say that I'm having rapid periods of rainfall and you know, 03:24 I know that I'm gonna have times I need to irrigate and the water's a little bit too muddy to be trying to go through here. Or my disc filters. 'cause face it, 03:32 I've stopped my disc filters up. That's no fun. I gotta stop clean 'em off. Yep. They can't self-clean it so much, 03:38 but there's other products that we can get that sand outta that water prior to it getting here. What options do I have there, Kurt? 03:45 Yep. So the best option to look at there is gonna be some kind of a hydrocyclone that's gonna spin just using hydraulic pressure. It uses, um, 03:52 hydraulic pressure and the, the centrifugal force. So that would be like this, um, centrifugal filter here. 03:58 This hydrocyclone kind of shows that a little better. We're feeding the dirty water or the, the water that has the silt or sand in it. It feeds in through here. 04:06 The sediments drop out into this tank and then the clean water comes out the top. So this is a, a real simple, 04:11 just a hydraulic setup that removes those heavy particles that would overload maybe your secondary filtration. 04:18 Have I gotta empty that by hand or is it gonna flush this to that Valve? We put a flush valve on the end of there, 04:22 so once a day it automatically opens up and dumps it up. All right. 'cause I don't have to run down there and 04:25 Yep. Every day it's all part of the automation. Yep. Yep. Don't, I don't have as many kids as usually. So You got grandkids coming? Yeah.
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersKevin Matthews
East Bend, NC