NEED A WATER BUDGET?
I am always encouraging customers to look at preparing a farm water budget. It is fairly straight forward process but does include separate budgets for fresh water (household use), garden and irrigation and thirdly stock. I generally encourage farmers to have three separate systems.
it is not critical to prepare a monthly figure but the budget must capture available water for critical times such as summer (and an assumption you will need reserves for three months).
The first question is what is available for water capture and supply. This may include runoff (into dams) or roof area into tanks (or dams) but also includes bores and rivers. Yield from bores and rivers is important. Secondly is storage and this includes dams and tanks.
The third key area is water use. This will include details on stock demand, irrigation demand and fresh water (house demand).
As a guide a two person house will use approximately 350 litres a day so for three months over summer you will need storage of at least 31,500 litres.
Stock and irrigation can use significant amounts of water (good quality water).
You need to budget for cattle drinking 100 litres a day (some like to budget for a much
greater amount) in summer and for irrigation as a guide a rural garden irrigation system
will need between 150,000 to 250,000 litres over summer.
I am happy to prepare a water budget for customers to guide decision making.
Kind regards, Jack
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