we put salt at the end of the wash, did the trick. no units frozen, in a fairly open parlour . also left the volume washer running slowly in the back of collecting yard through the night👍 had a nightmare week of frost december 2022, learnt a lesson the hard way
If you drop all the clusters onto the floor after milking and drain any water out of the bends wouldn’t it stop any problems or at least make it a lot easier to thaw
What I've done is drain the water out of all the pipes on the clusters. Covered the parlour with 1t bags cut open to cover more area. Have a space heater on a timer to heat under the bags. But the 1 thing I think is most important is to leave all lights on in the parlour. Leave taps cracked open to keep a gentle trickle going. Crack the fitting at the water troughs also. Any troughs in open areas I remove the ballcock. Also, leave a light on in the pumphouse. Might seem like overkill, but we dont get any frozen pipes
Another great video This cold snap has caught a lot of people off guard for sure Good luck protecting the parlour going forward More luck with the accountant, was never my favourite task, but as you say, a necessary evil of business Take care Geoff
I can see your system works but all it would take is a spark of the diesel space heater to light the tarpaulin and it’s a disaster. Bit more hassle but we have put the tarpaulin above the feeders and over the top and it can stay there till the cold snap ends.
Is it worth letting the cows into both sides straight away and use their heat to keep the chill off the second side whilst you are prepping and cupping the first side. Maybe just enough to stop the parlour re freezing.
Maybe something like a swimming pool cover or a tipper truck roll sheet would give you a semi permanent but removable cover for the parlour pit, if it ever got the stage where you needed it frequently
Think you'll find it's the pipes that control the milk meters red, green blue just pull them off as you are milking will remove the condensation that builds up. Drop clusters to floor. Worked for me down to minus 14.
We have a westalia/GEA parlour. Our engineer told us the problem is with the red and green pipes in the milk meters. They get moisture in them and freeze. We blow them out before a cold spell and it’s helped no end. We also use a space heater and a sheet over the parlour. Nothing worse than the parlour freezing up.
@ yes from the top down. We could never understand why some units in the middle of the parlour would freeze when more exposed ones wouldn’t. This seems to have sorted that.
We run the gas heater 24/7 when it gets really cold for us in east Germany. Keeps everything afloat til -15/-18 Colder than that sucks anyway. Not that of an open parlour as you have tho.
Good job on the code, possible improvement for desktop and tractor version when u have a soil sample you have all N P K date etc info, so why not cycle through them and enter 1 after another instead of back to soil sample add screen 3 less presses on the screen best of luck with it!
@@FarmTheoryNI If your looking to get rid of field names with the way you bring friends and other farmers in to help cart grass I would suggest implementing what3word, you can but a ref on your field table in DB and use the w3w API is fairly handy. Then u are eliminating the potential errors by operators going to wrong fields etc and it will be easier to explain the plan of attack - I think you should be cycling through those NPK questions think it would make it smoother..... then again I am only seeing a small part so might not make sense if saw big picture... Great Job so far with it do like your system!! - Can I ask though the GPS system is that downloading a copy of your DB to the field or pulling down relevant data, saw in an old video it was taking a long time to load... Are you tackling that problem in this new build or do you even see it as a problem??
I was thinking about RFID tags to measure distance from a tree/anything without GPS, not what they were designed for but wondering if that would be possible?
Randomly yesterday, the water intake monitoring system you showed in a video ages ago popped into my head. I was going to ask you how itbwas going and you beatbme to it. 👍🏻
You can buy a timer plug it into the power and the heater into the timer, you can set it that it will do 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off, save yourself fuel and the parlour will be warm in the morning, worked for me in colder temperatures in 2009/ 2010
Yeah I remember the winter off 2010. It was an absolute nightmare. Start milking at 4am finish at 12.30pm. Than just start milking at 4.30pm again. Give me chills just thinking about how bad it was 😂
I remember that freeze like last week. Pipes all frozen, even in house. Went to fane valley and got a new roll of blue pipe. Managed to get it connected to main at road. Was a spray hit neighbour on chest. He was helping. I ran to see if water was running OK, which thankfully it was. Neighbour came into shed to me rubbing his coat. Water spray had froze on his coat immediately. At least he didn't get wet, lol
we put salt at the end of the wash, did the trick. no units frozen, in a fairly open parlour . also left the volume washer running slowly in the back of collecting yard through the night👍 had a nightmare week of frost december 2022, learnt a lesson the hard way
I've been using 3 or 4 kgs of salt in the final rinse for years without fail. If its safe for a baby's bottle it's OK for milk I reckon 😉
Wooooooow!!! That's so smart! Definitely doing that! Thank you!!
Do the same with salt like 1 jug at end of wash leave sit in it then leave plate cooler going 1/4 way
Great to see the coding and pcb designs. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, will do!
If you drop all the clusters onto the floor after milking and drain any water out of the bends wouldn’t it stop any problems or at least make it a lot easier to thaw
We have a ceiling in our 16/16 if it's gonna be worse that - 5 we leave bar heaters on, been down to - 10, no problems!! 👍
What I've done is drain the water out of all the pipes on the clusters.
Covered the parlour with 1t bags cut open to cover more area.
Have a space heater on a timer to heat under the bags.
But the 1 thing I think is most important is to leave all lights on in the parlour.
Leave taps cracked open to keep a gentle trickle going.
Crack the fitting at the water troughs also. Any troughs in open areas I remove the ballcock.
Also, leave a light on in the pumphouse. Might seem like overkill, but we dont get any frozen pipes
-7 in Shropshire the other night, open sided parlour, biggest issue was sprayers were frozen but 15 minutes in a jug of water thawed the line out 👌
Another great video
This cold snap has caught a lot of people off guard for sure
Good luck protecting the parlour going forward
More luck with the accountant, was never my favourite task, but as you say, a necessary evil of business
Take care
Geoff
The tax bill is bad. 😂
I can see your system works but all it would take is a spark of the diesel space heater to light the tarpaulin and it’s a disaster.
Bit more hassle but we have put the tarpaulin above the feeders and over the top and it can stay there till the cold snap ends.
Is it worth letting the cows into both sides straight away and use their heat to keep the chill off the second side whilst you are prepping and cupping the first side. Maybe just enough to stop the parlour re freezing.
It's fine once you get milk into the lines.
We got down to minus 12 here in Aberdeenshire yesterday.
Maybe something like a swimming pool cover or a tipper truck roll sheet would give you a semi permanent but removable cover for the parlour pit, if it ever got the stage where you needed it frequently
Think you'll find it's the pipes that control the milk meters red, green blue just pull them off as you are milking will remove the condensation that builds up. Drop clusters to floor. Worked for me down to minus 14.
Yeah, that's the issue. Will try that the next time! Thanks!
Looking forward to another tech development video
We have a westalia/GEA parlour. Our engineer told us the problem is with the red and green pipes in the milk meters. They get moisture in them and freeze. We blow them out before a cold spell and it’s helped no end. We also use a space heater and a sheet over the parlour. Nothing worse than the parlour freezing up.
From the top down? Great idea.
@ yes from the top down. We could never understand why some units in the middle of the parlour would freeze when more exposed ones wouldn’t. This seems to have sorted that.
U will be glad to see the frost go.
I am!
We run the gas heater 24/7 when it gets really cold for us in east Germany. Keeps everything afloat til -15/-18
Colder than that sucks anyway. Not that of an open parlour as you have tho.
The biggest issue is when it's close to being cold enough to freeze. 😅
Good stuff
How many a side. .? Have you not got roller door at end ?
Morning, how many cows do you milk and how big is the parlour?
Have you tried taking the clusters off the jetters so they drain better.
Good job on the code, possible improvement for desktop and tractor version when u have a soil sample you have all N P K date etc info, so why not cycle through them and enter 1 after another instead of back to soil sample add screen 3 less presses on the screen best of luck with it!
The idea is you do it in the field, or select the field on the map. I am trying to remove the need for field names totally.
@@FarmTheoryNI If your looking to get rid of field names with the way you bring friends and other farmers in to help cart grass I would suggest implementing what3word, you can but a ref on your field table in DB and use the w3w API is fairly handy. Then u are eliminating the potential errors by operators going to wrong fields etc and it will be easier to explain the plan of attack - I think you should be cycling through those NPK questions think it would make it smoother..... then again I am only seeing a small part so might not make sense if saw big picture... Great Job so far with it do like your system!! - Can I ask though the GPS system is that downloading a copy of your DB to the field or pulling down relevant data, saw in an old video it was taking a long time to load... Are you tackling that problem in this new build or do you even see it as a problem??
Should put salt water through your machine it won’t freeze then
Like the Fed by Farmers green hoodie 😊
Was that a freebie from Cammy Wilson ?😊
It was indeed!
I was thinking about RFID tags to measure distance from a tree/anything without GPS, not what they were designed for but wondering if that would be possible?
RFID is very short range
Randomly yesterday, the water intake monitoring system you showed in a video ages ago popped into my head. I was going to ask you how itbwas going and you beatbme to it. 👍🏻
Haven't got a parlour like yours but I put a kerosene space heater and just turn it on and walk away burns maybe 8gls in 12hrs but worth it
You can buy a timer plug it into the power and the heater into the timer, you can set it that it will do 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off, save yourself fuel and the parlour will be warm in the morning, worked for me in colder temperatures in 2009/ 2010
The cover is unfortunately needed or the heat heads up to fast
You have to be careful with [ Kerosene ] fumes are the problem,
Would it be possible to have the software keep a tally of total n + p applied along year to see if you are nearing your limits
Yep, it does that. I will show that bit next week. 👍
Where do you get the RFID reader?
Do you design the boards, or do you just give them the pertinent information?
I design them also.
Just a question:
Would it be worth sray-Foam insulating the roof of the palour ?
Thanks for your Video 😊
Don't think so, it's a big shed!
Andrew not weather for shorts i see 😅
You should put a sheet on top make a roof
Will you be selling your GPS system to people?
Yep, that's the plan. Be a few months away
Yeah I remember the winter off 2010. It was an absolute nightmare. Start milking at 4am finish at 12.30pm. Than just start milking at 4.30pm again. Give me chills just thinking about how bad it was 😂
I remember that freeze like last week. Pipes all frozen, even in house. Went to fane valley and got a new roll of blue pipe. Managed to get it connected to main at road. Was a spray hit neighbour on chest. He was helping. I ran to see if water was running OK, which thankfully it was. Neighbour came into shed to me rubbing his coat. Water spray had froze on his coat immediately. At least he didn't get wet, lol
I also remember that week... Filling the feeders by hand twice a day! 😳
👍👍🙏🙏🇮🇪🇮🇪👌👌💪💪👏👏
I'm like 666 😭🤣
You won't to milk in -17 and we it worked