On site requirements for your fodder room. As with anything on farm, the better we prepare, the better the result.
The room needs to be placed on a level site. We find that concrete pavers are best to be placed under the feet for this purpose. We will provide you with a layout of the feet depending on the room size selected.
A clean water supply, provided under pressure, is essential. The water can be tank, bore or creek water. If you have any doubts about the quality of your proposed water supply then we recommend that the water be tested for both coliform and ph levels. If in doubt an external (to the room) filter should be fitted to remove any sediment present, from the water supply. A standard 25mm Hansen connector is placed on the outside of the room to enable connection to a supply. The room’s 60 litre stainless steel water tank is heated to 21 degrees as the barley plants do not like getting a cold shower. For most of our test rooms we simply connect an 18mm hose to the Hansen connector to feed the water into the room, but a 12mm hose will do just as well.
Power to the room is recommended to be by way of a dedicated 15amp supply ((No welders, generators, electric drills, smoko jugs, dagging plants or other “surge and blow up the electronics” devices can be plugged into this line), which should come directly from the board. We have operated a single bay test room consistently on a 10amp supply with no problems-again a dedicated line. When we test our double bay rooms we also run these on a 10amp supply. However as we don’t know what the supply conditions are in your area, we do recommend a 15amp supply with an automatically resettable RCD installed at the board..
You will need somewhere to store barley for the room. If you do not have a silo, then “1 tonne” bags [they actually hold about 850kg of barley] are an option, stored in a shed: the more vermin proof the better.
The room will need to be positioned onto a flat site and to this end is best unloaded off a truck equipped with a hiab. The front forks of the tractor, [no matter how long the pieces of pipe you usually put on them when you want to move over width loads] won’t do it. We will talk to you about positioning of the room to maximum advantage before delivery takes place. The room can be placed in the open, beside another shed or under a sheltered area such as a lean-to. [Our test room is outside next to our implement shed but it is sheltered by a arch type cover positioned between two shipping containers. It makes for working in a better environment when its blowing a gale or pouring with rain. On hot days it also creates an artificial cooling effect around the room and in the shed. We didn’t get the cover for the room, it was and still is mainly to keep the tractor under and to extend the working area of the implement shed.]
You will need to install a small drain to remove surplus water from the site. We recommend that you discuss this with us first before undertaking any drainage works and consider what you want to do with the pass-through water.
