Van Stadens float 2012.05.20

Sunday, 20 May 2012

It has been a good while since I made a blog entry so I just do this to make sure it all still works before posting something a little more serious again.

This is the main dam at Van Stadens wild flower reserve. Since we have reconstructed the 3km long pipeline we have also tried to maintain the level of this dam by partially opening the stopcock to match the input to the evaporation rate. This has not been very successful so I decided to install a float instead so we can control the level a bit better.

In the meantime we have stocked the dam with Tilapia and they are doing very well, the once murky water has cleared up remarkably, the only problem is that the reeds seem to like the constant level as well.

A few weeks ago we got the wrong connection to the pipe so that did not work very well but this time there was no such problem.

We hid the whole contraption under a pile of rocks and switched the water supply on, it all worked beautifully. Now we have to wait till the level has settled. While I was impersonating a plumber Ellie got busy pulling out some of the reeds, this went quite easily so if they ever become a problem they should be controlled quite easily.