Contractors' Corner

GREENING WINTON'S MAIN STREET

Atomic Irrigation is a design and installation business based in Townsville that was established in 2010 by Dan Smith. When he started Atomic Irrigation, Dan was no stranger to the industry having worked in it since he left school in 1996. We spoke to Dan about a recent project he completed in Winton, in the channel country in central west Queensland.

According to Dan, while he specialises in high quality residential and commercial irrigation systems in Townsville, having to travel to Winton was not unusual.

“Over our ten years of trading we have done many different projects all over north and western Queensland, including luxury villas on Hayman Island, plantation pine tree nurseries in Atherton, Lavarack Golf club upgrade with two new holes and, last year, the Winton main street redevelopment,” he said.

Irrigated turf adds a splash of green to the main street of Winton.

The project in Winton was initiated by Winton Shire Council, which wanted to bring life to the main street in the vibrant tourist town by adding a dash of green to the red dust. Atomic Irrigation had previously completed a project installing an irrigation system at the town’s Catholic school, so the council approached Dan to tender for the project.

“We submitted a CAD design and price for a full commercial spec system and won the job, which we completed in August last year in ten days,” said Dan. “Council did their own landscaping and we worked in conjunction with them to install the irrigation.”

The project called for a design with a slightly higher precipitation rate than Atomic normally works with (about 20 mm/hr). This was to take account of a couple of factors. One was the extreme heat during summer, when average temperatures are between 36 and 38ºC and have been as high 46.9ºC.

The other was the limited water window which is the result of demands on the heat exchanger that supplies the town’s water from a bore which free flows out at 85ºC. A booster pump was installed to increase the system pressure as the town main pressure was under 160 KPA at 1 L/sec.

According to Dan, he and his team thought it was a great job to work on.

“The Winton Shire Council staff were very helpful, and we thoroughly enjoyed the small-town hospitality from the locals. Being a tourist town, Winton had plenty on offer for our days off and the weather was quite pleasant even if it got down to zero one morning,” he said.

Feedback from the council was positive so another irrigation job in the channel country could be possible in the future.