we have a creek by our house. we use a pacer 5.5 hp pump to move water to our stock tank. looking for suggestions on maring irrigation system to move water from hose to our coastal pasture. if you just flood each terrace, we end up with more run off than soak in. thought about building something out of pvc pipe or someother kind of hose. any suggestions?

-- loretta in iowa park,tx (johnray@wf.net), January 15, 2002

Answers

We irrigate close to two sections of hay, alfalfa & sugar beets annually. We pay for our access to local canals (soil conservation district). Five, 12-hp pumps lift the water up to our cut ditches and another 2-hp pump put it into 12" pvc pipe going down to 6" and then into the fields. Flooding is much preferable to pivot sprinklers. On another field we use gated pipe instead of pumps to flood sugar beets.

In your case I would think a water collection device or pond at the lower end of the field would be sufficient to to re-circulate the water back onto the field, thus preventing it from running out.

-- matt johnson (wyo_cowboy_us@yahoo.com), January 15, 2002.

How many acres are you trying to irrigate? Assuming you have enough water to irrigate the acerage, a sprinkler system is used in most cases in Tx where you have irregular land. A sprinkler system requires HP to get the water under pressure into a pipe system. It also requires investing in pipes and sprinklers. These systems need to be designed for specific operations for best efficiency of plant. A 5.5 HP pump will not perform well for a sprinkler system, if you have several acres.

There are other options. You could take the water to the highest point on each terrace and run a pipe or soaker type hose (depending on your water output)the length of the highest point letting the water run down hill. This will be a guessing situation as you do not know the output of the pump. Once you put the water into a pipe and run it up hill, you will create more HP requirements depending on the vertical height to where you discharge the water, and friction in the pipe etc. However, Once you get the system monitored to where you can irrigate most of the terrace section; you can move it to the next or have a similar pipe setup for each section just shut off the section watered. This is manual labor, but with what you have it is the best option.

The pump you have operates under certain pump characteristics which determine what you can actually do with the specific pump. These are called pump characteristics, which include pump curves which provide water output, total head, and HP required under the conditions the pump was designed for. Most people purchase pumps without actually matching the conditions for which they pump. In these cases, it is just best to make the pump work getting what you can out of the system. A pump dealer can or should be able to help you; however, many do not have the information on old pumps nor have the expertise unless it is a pump dealer specializing in irrigation.

-- milam gerick (milamgerick@juno.com), January 15, 2002.