Hudariyat Cycling club Irrigation automation

About this project

The cycling club on Hudariyat Island required its irrigation system to be automated and monitored. Almafor delivered the control and instrumentation scope as a subcontractor to the main building contractor.

The control equipment is a wall mounted panel carrying both an RTU and a PLC. On a site of this size the two could have been combined, and they were kept separate for the same reason they are separated on our larger stations: the PLC handles the local sequence and the interlocks, and the RTU handles reporting and the link outward, so a communications problem cannot interfere with the irrigation actually running.

The field scope is what makes the system useful. Pressure sensors, pressure transmitters and pressure switches monitor the network, motorised gate valves allow zones to be opened and closed without anyone walking the site, and flow meters make consumption measurable rather than estimated.

Measured flow is the part clients tend to underestimate. An irrigation network without it can only be judged by whether the planting survives. With it, a leak shows up as a change in the pattern long before it shows up in the landscape, and the water actually used can be reconciled against what was intended.