Surging With Flexible Tubing

Three years ago Tommie Wages says he smugly thought he could put down exactly the right amount of water out of open irrigation ditches with his arsenal of five different sized siphon tubes.

"I'd be out there slogging through the mud in my rubber boots," he recalls, "along with my muddy roads and field seepage. I'd heard about surge irrigation, but I'd also heard so many divergent stories about surge vs. straight line irrigation. I just wasn't a convert, because I had refined my system for 28 years and could see better results in our fields with limited water than in neighboring fields."

The following year, because he was "tired of moving aluminum tubes and the subsequent labor hassles," the Abernathy, Texas cotton farmer made some changes. He switched to flexible plastic pipe and began experimenting with ways to adapt it to surge irrigation technology.

Today, Wages owns only four sticks of aluminum gated pipe, says his crop yield is measurably better, and the time and water saved are life savers to his 800-acre cotton operation near Abernathy. In fact, Wages now is a flexible poly tubing distributor and, because of his past experience with various size siphon tubes, is the manufacturer of 10 different size PVC gates for customizing flow from the flexible tubing.

"We figure we can provide an open-ditch siphon-tube farmer a 75 percent increase in water efficiency with our pipe, gates and a progressively programmed surge timer," Wages explained. The progressive timer allows for progressively longer surge cycles throughout the individual set, a technique designed to provide more uniform water application the full length of the row.

"I'm so pleased with surge and plastic I sold all of my aluminum pipe. I now have six farms, six surge units and 12 flexible poly tubing lines.

"We faced two engineering challenges with our poly tubing, however. One, the tubing is not designed to handle uphill flows of water because it will burst," he explained. "I only have two locations with the traditional T surge setup, where a surge valve runs in the middle of opposing lateral lines.

"Also, all of our remaining fields have one riser per field located on the upper end of the set locations. This gives us a downhill run on the irrigation water similar to that needed by ditching water."

Another objective for the system was to have multiple sets of water available for a lengthy period of time without moving gated pipe every day. A quarter mile length of poly tubing has 400 40-in. rows available across the field with solid irrigation.

"Since we needed to run water downhill on the ditch line as well as having a multitude of rows available without further labor used, we decided to attach a long length of poly tubing on the field with the lower elevation to a surge valve. We then locked the other side of the surge valve with an aluminum plug. Then, we reasoned, when the sure in the lower field switched, the plug would block the surge and the water would travel back up the underground line to a field with higher elevation. We could then install another poly line on a hydrant to irrigate another field. This would give us 800 40-in. rows available on two separate poly lines with surge efficiency on each."

The scheme worked where there was enough elevation difference, but on fields with less difference the top line continued a partial flow even when the surge was switched to the bottom line. To solve this, Wages built a 3-foot aluminum "horseshoe" to mount on the upper risers to increase the elevation difference. This allowed the two separate lines to receive all of the flow when the surge valve directed water their direction. The horseshoes are available from Wages for his cost of about $175.

After two years' experience with surge, and the reduced labor of not moving aluminum pipe and setting tubes, Wages says he's noticed a crop uniformity he's not seen except under center pivot sprinklers. Also, he credits better water placement with a 100 to 150 lb. increase in lint yields over the past two seasons.

"It used to take two hands twice a day to change the water on our farms, and they were flying," Wages recalled, "Now, one can handle the job in only hours, for one time a day per farm."

Wages says installing a quarter mile of flexible tubing takes him about 18 minutes with two helpers. "We use a hydraulic roller to lay the tubing in a trench we've dug with a lister-like tool to stabilize the pipe before it fills with irrigation water. Then, once the line is tied off with a heavy rubber band at the end and is filled with water, the process involves punching holes at each row and installing a nylon-socked PVC gate to control the flow."

The pipe stays in place throughout the watering cycle and usually lasts through four or five waterings, Wages said. "I can't help but remember how much time we spent setting aluminum tubes in the old days. Also, a given amount of water will cover 50 percent more ground than with our old method.

"And, I can't believe how enjoyable this is today, not wearing rubber boots."