Meters anyone??

For the past two and a half years I have been working with an irrigation company in Farson, WY, called the Eden Valley Irrigation and Drainage District (EVIDD).  I took over for another engineer who had been working with them since 2008, but was quitting JUB to seek better opportunities.  Little did I know how it would dominate our lives!

Downtown Farson

Could, but most likely Wouldn't

EVIDD has a reservoir called the Big Sandy Reservoir.  The reservoir retains water from the Big Sandy River, the headwaters of which are in the Wind River Mountains.  The reservoir discharges into a 30 mile long main canal.  The main canal has several offshoots or laterals, and each lateral has 5 to 30 turnouts.  My job has been to design and oversee construction of projects where we pipe the existing earth lined laterals. 

Pre-construction lateral and turnout

Post-construction turnout

This is what the area looks like when it is not irrigated

This is what it looks like in May :-(

 One of the first challenges that I faced were flow meters.  At each of the individual turnouts we have to measure the instantaneous amount of water being used, and the total amount of water used during the year.  There are several technologies that one could use to do this.  Unfortunately, the engineer that preceded me chose a technology that didn't work for our application.  He then left the company before he had to fix the issue.  We had over 30 meters installed that didn't work, and a client that was not happy.  I researched meters, met with sales representative, tried several types in the field, and finally settled on a meter that I felt would be an acceptable replacement for the bunk meters.  Since JUB was paying for this little debacle, we tried to keep our costs down by doing most of the work ourselves...which meant I did most of the work.

Step 1:  Excavate around the turnout pipe.  The bunk meters inserted into the top of the pipe to take their readings, so the top of the pipe was the only area that needed to be exposed.  The new meters clamp to the side of the pipe on the outside of the pipe.  This meant that each pipe had to be excavated to allow access around the entire pipe.

Excavating the pipe...it is as cold as it looks

 Step 2: Install new meters.  Nate worked with me for a few days.  We installed the sensors on the pipe, pulled cables to the remote telemetry units (RTU) and wired the displays into place.  He decided that engineering was not for him, and least my kind of engineering.  He also decided that it was important to stay in school.

Day 1 - still smiling

Pulling Wire

Sometimes there was concrete...

Sometimes there was water...

This is where I became an electrician...fortunately I didn't cut the green wire, which is Hollywood has taught me anything causes explosions.

 Step 3:  Sell the old meters.  My boss asked me the other day what we were doing to sell the bunk meters.  There isn't much of a market for used flow meters, but I gave it my best attempt.
 

 We didn't have any takers.