i-Riser wins Elmore award

WATER has always been a big focus at the Elmore Field Days.

Elmore Field Day

WATER has always been a big focus at the Elmore Field Days.

WATER has always been a big focus at the Elmore Field Days.

For the second year in a row, the Telstra Innovation award at Elmore has gone to a water infrastructure manufacturer.

Last year the award recognised Rubicon for its FarmConnect software, which monitors and controls soil moisture for farm management.

This year, the Elmore judges recognised Cohuna water systems manufacturer AWMA, for its i-Riser Plus, an automated or manually operated water riser with a special membrane designed to reduce sudden changes in air and water pressure that could damage pipes in the water supply system.

AWMA, which was founded in 2000, has recently won a contract to install large-scale water-flow systems in the Brisbane CBD.

The i-Riser Plus can be remotely operated using a smartphone app based on remote-control software from Melbourne developer Observant Technologies.

AWMA business development consultant Vern Costelow said the i-Riser Plus was developed after a meeting with water authorities, surveyors and irrigation system developers in March at Echuca, when AWMA presented the standard i-Riser product for evaluation.

Mr Costelow said it soon became clear that the build-up of negative pressure in the pipes was a widespread problem as water authorities and farmers replaced open channels with underground pipes.

He said the vacuum breaker and air-release system was designed to combat the negative pressure whenever a suction event occurred by letting air into the pipe and then releasing air from the pipe as an air build-up happened.

He said the system would work well on a series of bays, by replacing only one in every five or six standard risers to reduce water pressure changes.

The product has also been made stock proof and is easily retrofitted to any new or existing pipe and riser system.