lastditch · by FENBOT, the Fens, England
See your water table.
Prove your grant.
lastditch is continuous water-level monitoring for lowland peat — with the grant paperwork done by the machine that took the readings.
Applications close 18 September 2026, and every application must include a monitoring plan. We will draft yours — sensor layout, methods, data handling, the lot — free, whether or not you ever buy from us. It takes us about a day.
Ask for a monitoring planThe problem, plainly
Funded peat projects have to show their water levels — the schemes expect water-table depth and ditch levels, measured against ordnance datum, with the data made openly available. A person with a dip tape can do the minimum. But someone has to keep doing it, in February, in the rain, and then someone has to turn a year of soggy notebook pages into claim reports.
Commercial logger stations that automate this cost £800–£2,000 each, and the portal they come with has never heard of your grant agreement.
What lastditch does
Start with the dip tape you already own: each landholding types its monthly readings into its own page in minutes. Add proven off-the-shelf sensors — we publish exactly which, from UK stockists, around £100–£300 a point — and readings arrive automatically, hundreds for every one the schemes require.
Live charts with your target band drawn on. Each landholding sees its own data; the project lead sees the whole project. Alerts when a level drifts or a sensor goes quiet.
Readings are permanent from the moment they are saved — corrections sit alongside, nothing is overwritten. One click turns any period into an evidence pack, and your open-data page republishes itself with every new reading, as the schemes require.
The portal's own chart, drawn here with demonstration readings: two years of monthly water-table depth against the target band. The band shown, 10–30 cm below the surface, is the level the funded schemes ask you to hold (Countryside Stewardship CSW17/18); higher on the chart is wetter, and the terracotta dot is the latest reading. Every landholding gets exactly this the moment it starts entering data. Ask for a demo sign-in →
Built around the actual paperwork
- Readings levelled to Ordnance Datum, so your data compares with anyone's.
- Water table and ditch levels and rainfall — the full measurement set the Implementation Grant handbook expects, in one system.
- Every reading kept raw and tamper-evident, retained the full seven years your grant agreement requires — ready for an auditor who turns up unannounced.
- Open-data exports built in, because the schemes require data sharing — and because we think you should be able to take your data anywhere, any time.
Straight answers
- What does it cost?
- A monthly fee for the platform — the portal, dashboards, evidence packs, open data and seven-year record keeping. Sensors, if you want them, are off-the-shelf kit you buy from UK stockists at roughly £100–£300 a measuring point (a fully instrumented site typically lands around £2k, one written quote, grant-eligible). Monthly readings by hand? Then it is just the fee. Ask and we will give you real numbers for your site today.
- Do I need sensors at all?
- No. The schemes' minimum is monthly readings, and a dip tape plus our entry page meets it. Many projects will start by hand and add sensors where continuous data earns its keep. The evidence trail is identical either way.
- Is it certified measurement kit?
- No — and we will never pretend otherwise. lastditch is evidence-supporting monitoring: industrial pressure sensors, documented methods, calibration logs and a tamper-evident data trail. It is not MCERTS metering, and the schemes do not ask for MCERTS.
- Grant funding can pay for this, right?
- The Implementation Grant's own scope funds "infrastructure and telemetry", and monitoring equipment is listed as eligible expenditure. We quote with the capital/revenue split laid out so it drops straight into a claim.
- Who are you?
- FENBOT — an engineer in the Fens building the monitoring system this landscape needs, in the open, with the decision log to show for it. Small on purpose. When you email, you get the person who built it.
No forms, no tracking, no mailing list. An email, answered by a person.