The costly exercise of twice pumping 400,000 litres out of a dam onto the ground convinced Longreach grazier, Mac McClymont of the need for a remote telemetry system for his property.
“We had a couple of blowouts that we didn’t know about, so we wasted a lot of electricity as well as all the water,” he said.
These accidents coincided with an extensive water improvement program at Dalkeith, 120km west of Longreach, to utilise grass better, which meant a lot more equipment to be looked after.
“Some kind of monitoring system was essential but without much idea at the start, I thought we’d have to install something at each trough because that’s where the sheep and cattle come to,” Mac said.
“But there’s 30 or so and that was just too much. Then I thought tanks would be the thing but that was overkill too.
“I rethought it all, asking what it was essential to know.”
Together with Stockman Telemetry Systems, he designed a system that measures water levels in tanks, the power supply to pumps, water flow and pressure.
Being outside the range of any mobile phone service gave Mac McClymont limited options when it came to choosing what sort of remote water monitoring system he needed at Dalkeith.
“Most options were mobile-based – some were satellite phone models – but they all stored the information on a website, and I wasn’t over-fussed to pay to have access to my own data,” he said. “That brought us back to a solar-powered UHF system.”
Unlike cameras, UHF doesn’t use a lot of data, another detail that was attractive to Mac.
His bores are equipped with pumps, which he needed to be able to turn off remotely in the event of an alarm sounding on his computer, rather than a system that just gave readings.
“The company we dealt with matched equipment to what we demanded of it,” Mac said. “If we were doing it again I might not monitor so much, but the different elements are good for diagnostics.”
For example, just having a flow monitor without anything on the pump wouldn’t tell him if there was a blowout on a pipeline.
However, Mac cautioned against not overloading a system with more gadgetry than needed and having a cost blowout.
The cost of installing systems at three separate sites, covering waters for 12,140ha of the 28,300ha property, came in at under $10,000, including electrical requirements.
The system has been operational since March and Mac said it had saved a lot of heartache in the extreme heat, as well as a lot of travel.
“When you’ve got a pumping pressure system, the simplest failure hurts, especially in hot weather.”
The furtherest bore is 20km from the house and the family can now physically check that once a week.
“I spend five minutes morning and night checking the system on my computer now,” Mac said.
“The computer program is pretty basic. It’s nothing more than clicking on a few buttons, and the designers are a phone call away if you need help.”
It also records a log of everything that happens on the system to enable Mac and other users to go back and check if they suspect something is wrong.
If he leaves his computer running, Mac is able to keep tabs on his waters from anywhere in the world with internet access, via his iPad.
“It’s something we used to monitor every three days by vehicle, but now I can know if there’s something wrong within the hour.”