Waterforce Products


Frost Protection

New Zealand is the pioneer of frost protection using water application. The latent heat exchange as the water is constantly changing state from a liquid to a solid (ice) keeps the bud at just above freezing point.

Again design, installation and maintenance (particularly pre-frost ) is critical, and should only be accomplished by companies with the expertise and experience. (such as WaterForce)

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Key Features

  • Frost protection with water, is the most reliable form of protection compared to other options of Wind fans or helicopters (bringing down Convective warmer air into the vineyard)
  • Most common sprinklers are either larger Brass impacts (larger nozzles, less filtration required) or smaller Midi sprinklers (generally higher uniformity, smaller nozzles, less energy requirements, more redundancy factor)
  • However the water usage during an event is high, so water storage, or reliable water supply is crucial
  • Drainage can be an issue during and after a prolonged frost event
  • Infrastructure costs are high.

Highlights

  • High reliability, with design redundancy, (i.e. design a multiple pumping system to ensure capacity even if one pump fails), the only thing worse is in not having a frost protection system is to have a system that has applied water and consequently, ICE and then fail.......Pump, pipe and sprinkler must be of the highest quality to minimize any failure.
  • High Uniformity – Critical in ensuring uniform coverage of sprinkler application.
  • Simplicity of design, keep it simple.....you don’t want complications at 4.00am during a frost event.
  • Ease of removal in a vineyard, is a huge factor, to enable mechanised harvest and pruning.
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