Case Study: Rooks County RWD#3 Controls Upgrade
Summary
Rooks County Rural Water District #3 is a small water utility in north central Kansas that serves small communities and farmers. Their facilities include one water tower and 3 different well sites, scattered around the county. These sites are so geographically separated that to drive to every site in a loop was over 50 miles.
The RWD commissioned a study of their system. This study indicated that they needed to build another water tower and upgrade and install new water main piping to provide more interconnection between various parts of their system and to provide better pressure in all parts of their system. As part of this physical upgrade, it was recommended that a new control system be installed to replace the existing hardwired controls.
The Problem
The biggest issue was how to connect all of the well sites, the two towers, and the office together to provide a cohesive control system that controlled tower levels and provided new functionality to the operator by providing a centralized location to control the system and also provide 24/7 monitoring of the system and alarm notification when something goes wrong. In addition, it was desired to have additional information that would help the district fill out the state required reports for volume of water used.
Geography is the biggest single obstacle to overcome for this system. The straight line distance from the office to the new water tower was approximately 26 miles and the distance from the new tower to the existing tower and well site was an additional 13 miles.
The Solution
Studying the system revealed that a radio based communication system would work, because the height of the towers and the geography of the land created good line of sight between all of the locations that would have control. It was decided to utilize MDS iNET-II radios, which provide the ability to create an over the air Ethernet network. The listed range for these radios is 30 miles, so it was pushing the envelope of the radio