K F Ridsdale and DrainCenter Construct a 1.5 Million Gallon Capacity Lagoon To Store Slurry From Livestock Farm

New regulations stating that slurry can no longer be spread over the winter period during October-January means that livestock farmers will have to hold larger amounts of slurry for longer periods of time, which creates significant challenges for storage.

When a new EU directive restricting the spread of slurry from livestock was announced to come into force as of January 2012, Scalibar Farm in North Yorkshire was keen to take immediate action. With the help of specialist drainage merchants, Drain Center, and civil and agricultural contractor, K F Ridsdale (Yorkshire) Ltd, a slurry storage solution was born.

The directive will have a huge impact on Scalibar Farm, where pigs are reared on a commercial basis and slurry is traditionally stored in silos and utilised as fertilizer throughout the year.

To overcome this problem, Scalibar Farm employed the expertise of K F Ridsdale and Drain Center to construct a 1.5 million gallon capacity lagoon on site to safely store livestock by-product on a long term basis and meet the requirements of the directive.

Mark Jeffries, Key Account Manager at Drain Center, part of Wolseley UK, explained: “It was crucial for Scalibar Farm to tackle the problem of slurry storage quickly and efficiently well before the EU directive goes live and we were able to help by providing a storage solution that was workable and cost effective in a limited time frame. We were on hand not only to supply key pipe product but also to offer technical advice and support when it was needed.”

Several thousand tons of earth were excavated by K F Ridsdale and trenches created around a central lagoon, to enable pipework to feed the slurry from different areas around the farm. Drain Center provided more than two kilometres of PVC pressure pipe that feeds the lagoon as well as perforated twinwall pipe, which was laid at the bottom of the lagoon in a herringbone arrangement as part of a safety mechanism.