SASKATOON – Irrigating is a chore that takes Edwin Bronsch half the time it used to.
The Tilley, Alta. farmer has invented a tractor-mounted auger that bores a true hole through the bank of an irrigation ditch. Then he inserts a plastic irrigation pipe into the hole.
Now, rather than having to carry a spade with him to make sets when he flood irrigates, Bronsch reaches down from the top of the bank and takes off the cap (a four-litre ice cream pail) that plugs the pipe.
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“I don’t even need to wear rubber boots.”
Bronsch said he can irrigate three or four blocks at the same time and run more water on the field. The end result is more acres irrigated in less time with less labor.
His neighbors call his invention the Bronsch badger.
Design in detail
The auger is 2.5 metres long (eight feet) and has a diameter of 19 centimetres (7.5 inches) with an 45-cm long (18 inch) centering spear. A frame mounted horizontally on a three-point hitch tractor supports the auger and a sliding table. One hydraulic orbit motor drives a chain on the auger, another slides the table back and forth and directs the auger into the bank.
Bronsch said the first 15 cm (six inches) of the auger do the boring and the rest is just sucking dirt back out of the hole.
Mounting the auger on a stationary tractor eliminates any tendency for the auger to crawl, allowing a straight and true hole to be bored.
Once the hole is drilled, a heavy metal pipe (weighing about 114 kilograms or 250 pounds) mounted to the drawbar of another tractor, is inserted inside the 20 cm (eight inch) plastic irrigation pipe and then driven into the hole. A collar in the middle pushes against the end of the plastic pipe.
By pushing the plastic pipe through a hole that is about 2.5 cm (one inch) smaller than the outside diameter of the irrigation pipe, a tight seal of pressurized soil is created.
“I felt it was really important to not have to retamp.”
The concept seems to have worked. Of about 170 pipes he’s installed, Bronsch said none have leaked. The first ones have been in place for eight years.
So far Bronsch has only used the auger on his own property. He’s put in enough pipes to treat 160 acres of irrigation.
