[HollyMutual-Announce] Summer irrigation hours

[Holly Mutual Water Company]

All:

Today is the first day of our "Hot Days Irrigation Schedule" that runs
from June 16 to August 15. Water will be provided from midnight to 10:00
am each day. The "Cold Days Irrigation Schedule" runs from April 16 to
June 15 and August 15 to our annual shutdown (generally September 30 or
later if we have yearly capacity left over), during which water is
provided from 3:00 - 10:00 am.

Please water only on your two assigned days per week - we simply don't
have any additional physical capacity. At times in the past when a few
properties overused their privileges, our well storage tanks ran dry and
no one got any water. By sticking to the irrigation schedule you will
not only help your neighbors, but you will get more water for yourself.

A lot has changed since the current wells were drilled 35+ years ago.
Back then we had no Denver Water, and Holly Mutual was the
neighborhood's only source of water, both potable and irrigation. Those
well pumps were designed to provide full capacity water production 24/7
at about 400 gallons per minute each, and we only used our storage tanks
for emergencies when the wells failed. But the acquifer water level was
much higher back then than now, and we could use larger capacity pumps
because the well bore diameters are wider at the mid-levels of the
wells, rather than at the bottoms. Pumps also generate more flow the
less 'uphill' they have to pump.

With the acquifer level lowering each year, we had to switch to narrow
diameter, custom pumps to fit in the well bores nearest the bottoms. Now
we only achieve 60 - 100 gallons per minute of production from each
well. Not only is this much lower than when the wells were drilled, it
is only enough to supply around 6 properties at a time with irrigation
water. However with 48 properties irrigating two times each per week, we
need to run 14-15 at a time every night. Our current solution is to fill
the well storage tanks 24/7 and distribute from them each night. The
irrigation schedule is designed to ensure these tanks do not quite run
dry each night, because if they do run dry, there would be no water to
distribute. For equipment preservation/safety reasons, the well
controllers are programmed to shut down all water distribution if the
storage tanks get close to empty. While this has always worked, the
controllers do not always properly reset when the storage tanks refill.
When this happens, we typically lose a few days of water because we have
to schedule repairs.

The long and short of this is, as above, if everyone irrigates on their
assigned two days a week, we should have water for everyone. If not, we
will endure a lot of self-inflicted water outages.

Those of you carefully following the mailing list thread may realize
that since we turned the Holly Mutual system on in mid-April, we have
been distributing water 24/7 to allow homeowners and irrigation
companies to turn on and test their systems during daylight hours.
Normally by early May we switch our distribution timers to the "Cold
Days" schedule, but this year the weird May weather delayed a lot of
properties from getting their systems turned on. Thus by popular request
we extended and then re-extended the switchover until now. Colorado
Water Well has finally been scheduled to visit the wells in the next few
days to set the timers to the "Hot Days" schedule, so please be forewarned.

Thanks,
Mark