Farm capital decisions are made against a crop budget, in a season, by people who have been sold optimistic numbers before. This page builds the case from the ground up and is explicit about which terms are hard, which are soft and which we will not estimate at all.
About claims on this page
EcoloxTech generators produce a hypochlorous acid solution on site. They are regulated by the EPA as devices, are not registered disinfectants, and we make no efficacy claims for them or for the solution they produce. The only EcoloxTech product with disinfection claims is HOCl-AS200 (EPA Reg. No. 101112-1), used according to its label. Research cited here describes published studies of hypochlorous acid and electrolysed water under their own test conditions; it is not a claim for any product.
The hard numbers
Start with what your own accounts already know. These are not estimates; they are invoices.
| Line | Where to find it | Why it is often understated |
|---|---|---|
| Sanitiser and chemical purchase | Twelve months of invoices, all suppliers | Frequently split across packhouse, irrigation and general farm accounts and never added together |
| Freight and delivery | The freight lines on those same invoices | On dilute liquid chemistry this is a substantial fraction of the delivered cost, and it is invisible if you only look at unit price |
| Minimum orders and emergency deliveries | Purchase records at peak season | The expensive deliveries are the unplanned ones, and they cluster exactly when you cannot afford a stock-out |
| Storage and containment | Capital already spent, plus inspection and maintenance | Bunding, ventilation, secure storage and its upkeep are real costs attributed to nothing |
| PPE and disposal | Consumables and waste contracts | Drum returns, container disposal, PPE replacement |
| Acid for pH correction | Irrigation chemical purchases | Operations injecting hypochlorite into alkaline water often buy acid to compensate. That is part of the incumbent cost |
Against that goes the cost of generation: salt, water, electricity, consumable cell life, service, and the capital or lease payment. Those are quotable figures for a given specification and volume — they are not estimates either. The gap between the two columns is the part of the case you can defend line by line.
The agricultural terms
Here the model leaves the invoice file, and it is worth being clear about that rather than blurring it. Three effects are widely reported by growers, are agronomically plausible, and are not things we will put a number on for your operation.
| Effect | Why growers value it | Why we will not quantify it for you |
|---|---|---|
| Emitter clogging and line maintenance | Flushing, acid treatments, emitter replacement and the labour around them are an annual cost with a real number attached | The number depends on your water chemistry, system age and current maintenance practice. Yours is knowable; a generic one is not |
| Irrigation uniformity | Partially clogged emitters deliver unevenly, and uneven irrigation is a yield and quality cost that never appears on a maintenance line | Distribution uniformity can be measured on your system. A supplier-supplied percentage is worthless |
| Root health and crop loss | Waterborne root pathogens in recirculating systems can cost a crop, and the loss is discrete and large when it happens | This is the term most often abused in vendor models. We make no claims here; published research is in the hub and describes its own conditions |
The right way to handle these is to put them in the model as your own figures or leave them out. A case that stands on chemical spend, freight and handling alone, with the agronomic terms listed as unquantified upside, is more persuasive to a sceptical owner than one padded with borrowed percentages — and it survives the first challenge.
Labour and handling
Farm labour costs in this model are less about hours saved than about what the hours are spent on and who can be asked to do it.
- Chemical handling time. Receiving, decanting, transporting and dosing concentrated chemistry across a dispersed site takes real time and occupies trained staff specifically.
- Training burden on a seasonal workforce. Every season brings new people who must be trained on concentrated chemical handling before they can be useful. Reducing what is on site reduces what has to be taught, in several languages, every year.
- Dilution errors. A solution generated at use strength removes a step where mistakes are both common and consequential.
- Supervision. Someone has to check that dilution and dosing were done correctly. That supervision has a cost even when nothing goes wrong.
None of these convert cleanly into an hourly saving, and we would not present them as one. They belong in the case as operational arguments, stated as such.
Risk, insurance and continuity
Three risk terms are worth naming even though none of them is a line item until the day it is.
Supply continuity. A farm at peak harvest cannot pause for a chemical delivery. Operations that have had a stock-out at the wrong moment price delivery independence differently from those that have not, and they are right to.
Storage risk. Concentrated oxidisers on a farm carry fire, spill and incompatibility risk. Calcium hypochlorite in particular is a material with a well-documented incident history when stored or handled incorrectly. Reducing the concentrated inventory on site is a real reduction in exposure, and some insurers will acknowledge it — a conversation worth having with your broker before the decision rather than after.
Audit and buyer risk. A failed buyer audit or a suspended supply agreement is a large, discrete cost. A water programme with clean records reduces the probability of that happening. We will not attach a number to it, but a grower who has lost a contract over documentation will know what it is worth.
Scale, and when the answer is no
The single strongest predictor of whether onsite generation pays on a farm is water volume, and the second is the number of applications served. A packhouse washing continuously through a long season, plus drip irrigation, plus surface sanitation, is a different proposition from a small operation washing for a few hours a day in a short season.
| Profile | Assessment |
|---|---|
| High-volume packhouse, long season, drip irrigation, remote location | The strongest case. Multiple applications, high chemical spend, high freight, real continuity value |
| Greenhouse with recirculation and year-round production | Strong. Continuous demand, agronomic and food safety benefit from one system |
| Mid-size mixed operation with a short intense season | Depends on volume. Model it properly; the seasonality matters more than the annual total |
| Small operation, low volume, close to a supplier | Usually no. The capital does not recover against a small chemical bill |
| Operation with difficult source water and no pre-treatment | Solve the water chemistry question first. It may change the answer either way |
| Operation with no one to own plant equipment | Usually no. A delivered product and a simple dosing pump is the better fit |
Capital, lease and the seasonal problem
Farm cash flow is seasonal and capital approval is annual, which makes the financing structure part of the decision rather than an afterthought. A lease converts a capital request into an operating line that sits next to the chemical spend it replaces, which is the comparison the business actually wants to see. An outright purchase is cheaper over a long horizon and harder to approve in a tight year.
Two practical points. Size the system for peak demand, not average — a generator that cannot keep up during the four weeks that matter is a false economy, and peak on a farm is extremely peaky. And account for the seasonality in the running-cost model: a system idle for five months still costs something, and a system running flat out for eight weeks consumes more than the annual average suggests.
Building a case that survives scrutiny
A structure that works, in the order a farm owner or a board will read it:
- The current position. Twelve months of actual chemical, freight and handling spend, added up across every account it hides in.
- The proposed position. Quoted running costs for the specified system at your volumes, plus the capital or lease payment.
- The difference, stated conservatively and sourced entirely to invoices and quotes.
- Unquantified considerations, listed honestly: line maintenance, uniformity, supply continuity, storage risk, training burden. Named, not numbered.
- What is not being claimed. No efficacy claims for the generated solution, no promise of yield improvement, no promise about pathogen reduction.
- The risks of proceeding. Water chemistry, service dependency, the need for a named owner.
That last section is the one that makes the difference. A case that names its own risks reads as an assessment; a case that names none reads as a sales document, and farm owners have seen plenty of those.
One further step is worth the time: ask whoever keeps the books to verify the current spend figure independently. It is the number most likely to be challenged and the one a supplier cannot verify for you. A figure the business office has checked itself gets defended in the room.
Piloting, and what to measure while you do it
The most persuasive number in any farm business case is one measured on the farm making the decision. A pilot on a single application — usually the packhouse wash — for one season produces exactly that, and it is worth structuring deliberately rather than informally.
Measure four things and only four. Consumption: what the system actually used against what was projected, including the peak weeks. Residual stability: how often the reading sat inside specification without intervention, which is the real operational question. Labour: the time spent handling, dosing, testing and correcting, compared honestly with the incumbent. And deviations: how many, what caused them, how long they lasted. Those four cover both the economics and the operational reality, and they are all countable.
What not to measure in a first pilot: anything requiring a yield trial. Attributing a yield difference to a water treatment change within one season, on one block, with one season’s weather, is not achievable at farm scale, and a number produced that way will not survive scrutiny. Leave yield as unquantified upside, and let the defensible numbers carry the case.