Category: Clients

RippleAquaplast were asked to compile a complete irrigation audit of the nursery to cover the following –

1. Problem areas you are looking to solve e.g. reservoir filtration, underground mains pressures in certain areas
2. Filtration in general
3. Pump houses
4. Sprinklers systems – overhead and on risers inside and out
5. Drip systems
6. Capillary beds
7. Propagation
8. Control systems
9. Overview of the new area

One of the most obvious areas for improvement was in the filtration of the water being pumped from the river and reservoir into the holding tank. An old sand filter had been decommissioned some time ago which meant a large amount of sediment entering the holding tank.

Filtration consisted of screen filters in the pump house and locally at various points around the nursery. The most cost effective solution suggested was to install a suitably sized filter system prior to the holding tank and clean out the holding tank to give a fresh start.

The filtration system was specified with assistance from our partners at NaanDanJain and Yamit filtration. The final recommendation was to install 4 x 30” media filter with an automatic back flushing controller and safety screen filter on the outlet. The media to be used is a new innovation called Garofiltre which consists of crushed glass to a specific particle size of 0.7-1.3mm which gives a filtration degree of 100 microns.

To see a sand and GARO®filtre comparison for irrigation purposes, click Tech Data.

Our first trial system was installed at Hugh Low Farms around three years ago. These guys take their in-field trials seriously. After running this system well for the three years, only then did the team at HLF feel comfortable with ordering additional NDJ Click Tif drippers.

A project of over 5 acres of Soft Fruit table top with over 100k drippers, filtration, automatic valves and all the pipe work. Whilst the general design mirrored the HLF favoured style, the technical team at Ripple Aquaplast were always keen to input and managed to convince the irrigation manager, Valentin Cojocaru to make some alterations to the original design. Improvements are often not seen as one great step forward, more likely a collection of smaller improvements.

Everything is top notch! It’s been a pleasure to work with the experienced team from HLF who always approach things logically and rationally.
Hopefully after this project comes to an end, the results will convince the guys to place more future projects with Ripple Aquaplast.

Ripple Aquaplast encourage future growth.

3 years ago the McIntyre’s brought together a new project for strawberries on raised beds and under polythene. They provided a new pump house and RA supplied a new twin pumping system with speed control from Lowara and a two fertiliser plus acid injection system.

After two seasons the farm was ready for expansion onto a new field along with a new crop of raspberries. Of course NDJ drip products were selected primarily because of their superior technical performance in a difficult terrain. The resultant uniformity has continued the great results from year one.

At the beginning of 2018 the rig was upgrades from a 2 + 1 to a 4 + 1 rig. This allowed two separate mixes of fertilisers to be created within the pump house. So each recipe did not mix with the other a separate header pipe along with control valves was designed and installed.

This is the advantage of Ripple Aquaplast systems insomuch that they are designed with growth in mind so can be added to and developed as the cropped area grows, or the crop changes or indeed, growing ideas change.

Computer sensors monitor the EC and pH of the water leaving the tank and before it reaches the rig. If it exceeds the parameters set, then the water is stopped before it can go to the field.

A twin pump set with variable speed control has the capabilities to operate single or double valves if required or simply operate on a lead/standby system.

The rig has six venturi legs and a second set of sensors looking at the amount of additives going to the field. This system has separate header pipes going to each field which gives the grower the opportunity to adjust fertiliser levels on each valve. This helps if the crops are planted at different times or if adjustments need to be made to the fertiliser levels locally.

All the valves are pressure regulated to allow for varying pressure losses down each header pipe.

Another successful project finished!

5Ha of Strawberries substrate, over 200k NDJ ClickTif on Phase II and over 400k on 10Ha in total Phase I & Phase II.

The complete system was design to deliver the accurate ml of water and fertiliser at the root zone, with the corret pH and EC which resulted on 98% of 1st class yield this year. Agreat deal of emphasis was given to ensuring that the drippers had zero run off. Steven Busby was quite insistant upon this as he realised that this was critical in delivering the correct feed to the plants in the most uniform manner. It took a little double checking – with the installation of some pressure sustaining valves – but the zero run off goal was achieved!

Another development in technology was the installation of the NDJ Greenline Softwre which interfaces the feed rig with windows driven PC via a remote roam plug in. Installed and working, phase II is being installed this autumn and is already well on the well. All with NDJ Click Tif of course!

It’s been a pleasure to work on this project together with Littywood team which are very dedicated, professional and skilled people and looking forward to engage on Phase III.

The blue tank takes in water automatically from the mains pipe attached, the narrow black 8mm PE pipe goes into the 60% Nitric acid mix. To achieve the target pH of 6.5 for this site, we opted to use the black nozzle attachment which gives a ratio of 1:28 and 1% of the Tefen.

Inside the blue tank there is a small Venturi injector, this can be fitted with a range of nozzle sizes, depending on the preferred output level. The Tefen used, is a proportional injector, meaning if the water flow increases or decreases the amount of acid will also adjust automatically.

With this type of system in place, you can also monitor the inlet to the rig, so if the pH is way off then the controller will stop it.

The Tefen unit has a black manual switch which allows the unit to switch on and off, with he water still able to pass through, no need for a bypass! This switch can either be manual or electronic.

The main advantage of this system is no one has to touch it, the mixing of the acid and water happens when it is required so you don’t have layering in the tank, and you have time for the air to mix with the acid and stabilise.

Hence, one sprayline was fixed every 6.4m in the Venlo glasshouse with a sprinkler every 3m along the line, using NDJ Aquamaster up-side down sprinklers gives 5.5mm/h precipitation with a CU greater than 85% which is more than enough for this application.

Another great advantage of NDJ is the wealth of knowledge available in the company. For this design Mr Arie Peleg gave various options depending on Haygrove’s priorities. Arie has 35 years micro sprinkler design experience specialising in glasshouses. He has managed and developed the Dutch market for many years understanding the higher needs of glasshouse customers.

Panlathy Farming are a longstanding customer of Ripple Aquaplast, commissioned us to survey, design and provide a quotation for a reservoir pumping system. This would be for the recently acquired farm to the North of Inverkeilor, to expand their potato growing operation.

The farm came complete with a reservoir and underground water mains infrastructure supplied by a diesel powered irrigation pump. The decision, as with their other farms, was taken to invest in an electric pumping system comprising of a Lowara 45kW speed controlled surface pump with a 7.5kW submersible priming pump linked via a GSM controlled system.

This involved the relocation and upgrading of the existing power supply. The main use for the pumping system will be irrigation reels, although sprayer filling is possible as well.

Soft Fruit Grower in Perthshire

Andrew Barrie owns and runs a significant soft fruit – both raspberries and strawberries – operation near the picturesque Vale of Strathmore in Perthshire, near the towns of Couper Angus and Blairgowrie. Colbeggie Farm takes pride in offering only the highest quality fruits which all goes to the supermarkets.

Andrew also takes great pride in his team and wanted to invest in upgrading the water supply to the staff accommodation for use in their showers, kitchens and general areas.

Following a site visit, Ripple Aquaplast’s technical team designed, supplied, installed and commissioned a new potable water supply by linking a borehole. 50,000 litre covered water storage tanks to WRAS approval, a twin variable speed pump set to supply 6m³/h of drinking water to the suite. Further expansion is planned in the coming months.

New Farm Produce Install Eighth Aquaplast Feed Rig System

Eight years ago at New Farm Produce we successfully installed our first Aquaplast feed rig system to enable us to have accurate control of a raised coir bag growing system. After enormous success through the years we are currently in the process of installing our eighth Aquaplast feed rig system to allow us to control fertigation on a new soil grown strawberry site, showing our confidence in the equipment for both substrate and soil grown systems. With a user-friendly interface, accurate controls and the ability to have flexible watering and feed programmes the Aquaplast feed rig system has allowed us to improve our irrigation management by delivering a precise, effective output to each and every plant resulting in reduced water consumption and reduced fertiliser costs.

And we are currently looking at additional features to our systems such as a HMI (Human Machine Interface) software package and participating in a RTM (Real Time Management) project to enable even more accurate dosing.

“Aquaplast have undoubtedly delivered great results at New Farm Produce subsequently having a huge positive impact on our business.
We would like to thank Ripple Aquaplast for all their support.”

After being recommended by Dafydd and Andrew Joseph of Dingle Nurseries, Welshpool, Mark Bebb, managing director of Salop Leisure in Shrewsbury approached us to design and supply an irrigation system at a new plant. The plant centre will complement their already bustling caravan and leisure sales complex. The design involved providing a suitable sized water storage tank with a pump to supply water to the various different irrigation systems – sprinkler, drip and hand watering, which were installed across the centre.

We were requested to find an installer as the weather and other factors had caused delays meaning that it would not be feasible to meet the Easter opening deadline. We worked in conjunction with one of our colleagues to complete the installation which included some reworking along the way to take into account changes in layout and design.