Let there be water: Water tank installation at the farm

Rain has hardly fallen since sometime in November with a little rain storm on Christmas day and one about a week ago. The rainy season will start int he next month or 2 though. I want to be able to farm around most of the season and this will take some irrigation. Already water is very difficult at the resort near by with the well producing salty water extremely high in iron. We run a desalination plant and reverse osmosis with multiple sand filters just to get water that will not destroy pipes and fittings around the property used for bathing and other needs. Also our filtration does not keep up with the demand of the water needed in a typical week here, so we end up trucking in most of our water. The farm is also about 100 meters from the gate of the hotel so running piping to the farm would also be capital intensive even if there was enough water to tap into.

This left my option pretty limited in terms of irrigation. I did have a 3000 liter water tank in Accra that my business partner was using. I asked to have this back and originally planned to have it around the 1st of December but as usual the best laid plans never go as planned. Increased water issues and his plans changing complicated this and he rather suggested he give me the money for a new tank. This took some time to come up with and finally this month I got the money. Then my truck broke so I was delayed a bit there too. But as of now you can see that I have a water tank at the farm and I am ready to start hand watering at least.

So when I decided to put the tank on the land there were other challenges that had to be addressed:

• Where: It should be at the top of the property or at as high level as possible
• Level flat spot: The tank should sit on a level and flat spot which did not exist.
• The base under the tank should be firm so it does not sink and rocks do not push their way through the bottom of the tank.
• It should also be close to the road so it can easily be filled.
• Security, the tank should be secure so the whole tank is not stolen and the water inside should be secure.

Originally I flattened a place near a power pole I was just going to put a chain around the power pole and attach it to the tank somehow, probably through the lip at the top with a lock. This was great until I learned the resort owner will be putting a wall around the farm soon and this flattened area was right where I believed the wall would run. So I had to find a new place and it was just a bit lower and where my pepper bed was the prior season.

I looked at doing a concrete block base and looked at the possibility of doing a square base 2 levels high. I then did the calculations and a round base would be a total of 10 blocks less, so rather than 40 blocks I would only need 30. This would also mean less filling and less area taken by the base on the farm. The tank is 60 inches wide at the bottom so I looked at having a base diameter for the pad being 70 inches to leave 5 inches of space around the tank. Now to make calculations easy this ended up being the inner diameter of the ring of blocks. So the out diameter ended up being quite a bit larger and a bit oversize for what I need. It is all a learning experience I guess. I think a tighter circle would have been harder to make also anyway.

The first step was putting a stake in the middle of the space and measuring a string out 35 inches from this stake and tying it to the stake. I used this to draw a circle around the stake.

I then excavated this place to make the base for the blocks as level as possible. This was no so easy in the heavily compacted areas but I was able to get down far enough for a simple construction like this.

I then mixed cement and laid a few inches in the excavated area and let this cure.

At this point I got the blocks and after the foundation had cured well I laid all the blocks in one day. I really have not done much masonry before and I do not have a proper trowel so it was a lot of work. I also do all my farm work at the end of the regular day usually from about 4.30 until 6.30 when it gets dark. On this day since I started mixing the mortar I needed to use it all until it was finished, so I did not finish until about 7pm in the dark.

Next I spent about 3 days shoveling and filling the space. I wrapped a chain around a big block of cement I dug up and put in the filling so the chain would come out the surface of my cement work when finished.

The last step was to cap the base with another layer of cement. This also took a whole evening and I finished just as it was getting dark again.

I then got the water tank to the property and plugged the holes that I did not need. I also fiberglassed a small pipe section to the side of it to run my chain through, I did a very quick and ugly job here as I was not looking to win any beauty contests. I then did a valve coming out of the tank, a T and then 2 more valves on each end of the pipe. One end that is turned down will be used to fill my watering cans. The other will be hooked up to more hose and pipe running around the farm for gravity fed drip irrigation in the near future.

I then got some help and moved the tank to its new home. I put the chain through the secure area and locked it and then put a tap cover on the stop cock and locked it.

This morning when the water truck came to the resort I had them fill my tank with 3000 of the 10,000 liters. I was able to fill my water can and start watering some things. Next will be planting of my nursery bed.

All photos were taken from my Google Pixel 3xl phone.