Irrigation

Furrow Irrigation with Gated Pipe

Irrigation Main

Furrow with Siphon Tubes

Furrow with Gated Pipe

Center Pivot

Drip Irrigation

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The next innovation was to use a buried underground pipeline to distribute the water from the well to the point of application. This increased the conveyance efficiency to nearly 100%. A cap was placed on a vertical riser from the underground pipe line. This cap opens the valve and allows water to enter the surface pipes. The pipes have gates that can be set to adjust the rate of water flow down the field in an attempt to get a more uniform distribution efficiency and to decrease tailwater.

Many furrow systems were 1/2 mile in length and might take as long as 24 hours for water to reach the lower end of the field which usually had a 0.5 to 1% slope, and the water would be allowed to run another 12 to 24 hours to get the water at the tail of the field deeper into the root zone. This often resulted in a large amount of tailwater.

The application efficiency (amount of water applied relative to amount of water stored in the root zone) and distribution efficiency (even depth of wetting from top to bottom of field) were usually less than 60% for these systems. The overall efficiency of these systems is ranges from 50 to 60%.

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