Thread: One for the fridgies

Burns Philp, Paul.

Originally Posted by rick130

I love the smell of cows Des!

Cousins had a dairy, and when I was a little bloke Dad's business had 100 dairies on their books!
The vast majority where gone when I was working, there were 6 initially when I was 25 and I only had two left in the finish when we moved to the farm, all the others had closed.
One had a Dairy Kold ice bank, it was all new fangled, adapted to an old Dairy Kold vat, they'd just removed the fixed orifice and pumped the chilled water through the old refrig circuit, and the other had a Kelly 72 from memory, can't recall what type of vat though.

But I'd worked on Dairy Kold, Alfa Laval, Frigrite, and a couple that I remembered five minutes ago and now....

I grew up on a dairy farm in WA. What was then called a "quota" farm, where we were paid a premium price for the amount of milk agreed to in the quota. This was long before bulk tank systems, all done in 10 gallon cans. But we were required to "cool" the milk, which was done by running the milk over a tubular cooler that had "chilled" water running through it. There was a "guideline" issued concerning how to "chill" the water,. A tower with about 4 or 5 feet square and 10 feet high with ventilated walls, placed over a concrete trough. A bit like a modern air con cooling tower.
My late Father went one better and constructed a tower over the top of a well next to the dairy. The well was "dry". so he simply filled it up with fresh water. A small pump circulated the water to the top of the tower where it ran through an old shower head and then fell down the tower.
It worked very well and the temperature drop exceeded whatever the requirement was. The milk was then picked up on an open truck twice a day. At some later stage the trucks were required to have an open canopy fitted to them.

We sold that farm before it became compulsory to have refrigerated holding tanks, but I did do some electrical work on them in later years.
The last time that I was in Australia my mate was still milking cows and had put in a bulk tank. Believe it or not, he bought the tank second hand from our old farm where the new owners had gone out of milking!

He called me to have look at it as the bloody thing kept tripping out on hot afternoons. The bloke that installed it had the condensing unit mounted so that the fan was blowing the air straight out up against the brick wall of the dairy! It was doing what it should do when the head pressure got too high! Rather than move it I suggested another fan controlled by a high side pressure switch, but the fridgy had no idea just how to do that.

With the downturn in the number of dairy farms now remaining in Australia, there must be hundreds on those bulk tanks for sale.

Lots of those vats have been re-purposed, wine, was one thing they've been used for.
My uncle sold his quota not long before de-regulation here in NSW, (mid 90's?) And it was fortuitous timing for him. He still lives on the old dairy but suburbia is encroaching.
Everyone that has remained had to go big and the very big went undercover feedlots. Cows love to wander and graze, they can't do that in a feedlot.

I used to have spare agitators, agitator gearboxes and parts. If you ever had a freeze up you'd hopefully break the drive pin for the agitator, but sometimes you'd strip a gear.
I still have a big dial thermometer/thermostat stashed away.

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Burns Philp, Paul.

No worries,Ron

Originally Posted by rick130

Lots of those vats have been re-purposed, wine, was one thing they've been used for.
My uncle sold his quota not long before de-regulation here in NSW, (mid 90's?) And it was fortuitous timing for him. He still lives on the old dairy but suburbia is encroaching.
Everyone that has remained had to go big and the very big went undercover feedlots. Cows love to wander and graze, they can't do that in a feedlot.

I used to have spare agitators, agitator gearboxes and parts. If you ever had a freeze up you'd hopefully break the drive pin for the agitator, but sometimes you'd strip a gear.
I still have a big dial thermometer/thermostat stashed away.

At that time in WA the quotas were allocated to the farm, they could not be sold separately. My Father always said that he would have sold it and kept the farm if it had been possible. There were a multitude of other things that he could have done with it, breeding horse's for one thing as he was a great horseman. He had put just on 20 years into it after the War, as he got the place through the soldier settler scheme.

Do you recall what electric motors were used if there was no 3 phase supply available? Where we were the supply was 500 volts single phase. Some people refer to it as 2 phase, but it was just a single phase transformer with a centre tap. All the milking machine motors in the area were 500 volt repulsion induction motors, I think 5hp. Where I served my time we used to run a service for the bloody things. The farmer could arrange to bring it in early, or at odd times we would go and get it, and we would overhaul it and have it back in time for the afternoon milking.

The refrigeration motors must have been bigger than 5hp. I have seen some listed at 10hp, but it does not say what voltage or phase they are.

Originally Posted by scarry

No worries,Ron

Sorry for being a pedant.
For years I called them Philip. I saw the correct spelling in Normanton and initially thought the signwriter had stuffed up.

Originally Posted by Old Farang

At that time in WA the quotas were allocated to the farm, they could not be sold separately. My Father always said that he would have sold it and kept the farm if it had been possible. There were a multitude of other things that he could have done with it, breeding horse's for one thing as he was a great horseman. He had put just on 20 years into it after the War, as he got the place through the soldier settler scheme.

Do you recall what electric motors were used if there was no 3 phase supply available? Where we were the supply was 500 volts single phase. Some people refer to it as 2 phase, but it was just a single phase transformer with a centre tap. All the milking machine motors in the area were 500 volt repulsion induction motors, I think 5hp. Where I served my time we used to run a service for the bloody things. The farmer could arrange to bring it in early, or at odd times we would go and get it, and we would overhaul it and have it back in time for the afternoon milking.

The refrigeration motors must have been bigger than 5hp. I have seen some listed at 10hp, but it does not say what voltage or phase they are.

All the stuff i worked on was 415v, 3 phase.
It's a shame dad isn't with us anymore, he installed the vast majority of bulk milk vats from Wallacia through Penrith, the Hawkesbury and right up to the far reaches of the McDobald valley (St Albans/Upper McDonald)
That was the early 60's and the McDonald valley would've had dodgy power back then, and his recall of those times was pretty damned good.
By the time I started work in the early 80's the majority of those dairies had gone, especially in the McDonald valley. Too small to be viable.

I have a stack of photos of refrig installs including milk vats from the 70's, I'll go through them on the weekend and post some up.