Water, water all around, and not a drop to drink!

Rainfall in the first five months of 2010 was the lowest in 45 years this blog reported last week! Being located in Cheshire which is famous for green fields and lots of rainfall, water’s not always been something we’ve been worried about using too much of.

But having a large diary enterprise uses a lot of water as well as energy. And we all know resources aren’t cheap and they are running out. On current projections, humanity will need at least two planets' worth of natural resources to survive by 2050. But for us to change our behaviour, it has to make economic sense. Well, I can say that it does.

We seized the opportunity back in 2001 when we underwent some extensive building work, to capture all the rainfall on our 3500m2 of roof space. It was done, I must say, for predominantly money saving reasons as my water bill was rising at an alarming rate. Our projected future was around £15000pa; installing the system was a no-brainer.

This system involved sinking a large second hand 18000gal tank to store the rainwater. The next step was to drill a borehole which came on stream in 2005. We had now cracked the water bill all bar our own domestic use.

As milk production was increasing on the farm, so was my electricity bill. We had enjoyed the low tariffs for some time but as our contracts were coming to an end we were looking at a 35% increase in our spend.

In 2008 we installed a 40point rotary milking parlour and set about investigating energy efficiencies in milk cooling and heat recovery for the new larger fridge plants. This was done with much encouragement from the tank manufacturers as they had a new system that would recover heat from the fridge plants which heats 1500L of water to circa 48C every day. This is then moved into the boiler and topped up to 76C for washing the plant. The savings have come from the kilowatts used and not so much the pounds as our electricity supplier increased the tariff just at about the same time we started on the new parlour. I wonder what we would be paying out now if we hadn’t changed!

We also use borehole water for pre-cooling the milk together with iced water which is made on the cheaper night time tariff. This ensures our milk arrives in the bulk tank at around 6 degrees Celsius before any refrigeration is required. The borehole water is then used a second time in the volume washer for cleaning the parlour, it’s then collected and used on a small flood wash system to clean the collecting yard. So the borehole water now has three jobs to do before in ends up in the slurry lagoon.

What next? I’ve also just started to look at solar and wind energy generation as it does worry me as we move forward paying ever more for electricity.

John farms 340 dairy cows, producing circa 3 million litres per year, in Cheshire at Huntington Hall Farm.

Read more about John Allwood’s energy efficiency investments here.