Our Unique Water System

I wanted to have a little talk with you today about how our water system works and how it's put together. 

We've got a straight forward system here. It is much simpler than most aquaculture sites, which use large, expensive pumps. We do it very simply with small, inexpensive swimming pool pumps.

We Start at the Wharf

We've done things a little differently with our intakes. We took a 150mm PVC pipe and drilled 12 mm holes into it to prevent anything significant from entering the pump intakes. Next, we put a piece of 50 mm PVC pipe that goes down into a 150 mm pipe, which sucks the water to our pumps.

Sea water intakes below our wharf at Whekenui Bay, Arapawa Island

Water pipes taking the sea water from the wharf intakes to the wharf pumps

All the pumps used in our operation are 1.5 horsepower swimming pool pumps (simple gear), and we've got five of those down at our wharf, as the sea is the source of all the water that's pumped up to our farms. The water travels through 100 mm underground pipes for about 200 metres to our growing sheds.

Five swimming pool pumps at our wharf pump house

  

Inside the Farms

Once inside the farms, four more 1.5 hp pumps are used, like the one shown below, to pump the water to the approximately 350 tanks containing our paua. There are two pumps in each farm fitted with sand filters which filter out sea sand and other debris from the water before it's distributed to the tanks. Each pump is backwashed every day to get rid of this debris.

Farm pump, sand filter tank and pump being backwashed

Our Unique Bucket Tipping System

The water is pumped through our very unique, specially designed tipper bucket system, which replicates the wave action of the sea. It goes through up to three tanks and then back out to sea, so it's a straightforward system.

Our unique tipper bucket system which provides water to all the tanks where our paua live

Water from the paua farm being pumped back to the sea

The pumps are relatively inexpensive and run for years. Some of our pumps are almost 20 years old now. Every year or two, you have to pull them apart and put a couple of bearings in the motor, bearings are $9 each so $18.00 to rebuild the motor.

The only thing that has ever gone wrong with the pumps is a seal. They're about $70.00 to install new seals, so it's all straightforward.

This system design has come about after 20 years of trial and error!

If you'd like to see first hand how this all works, come and visit us and we'll be more than happy to show you!

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