Event ID: 2617817
Event Started: 5/26/2015 1:48:28 PM ET
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Welcome everyone to today's concentration webinar. My name is Holli Kuykendall and NRCS national technology support Center in Greensboro North Carolina and I'm your host for today's presentation. This webinar is being recorded and all participants are in the webinar in listen only mode. You receive the webinar audio through your device speak. There is no telephone dial-in. If you are having audio difficulties please various ways of adjusting your computer speakers including the speaker and volume settings available in the Adobe connect menu bar. Computer or mobile device headset can help with your audio quality and volume and also note that the small status bar indicator to the right help in the Adobe connect menu bar. Anything other than all agreed is an indicator of possible network issues that are local to your connection. Please note that you can download ABD have to take the slides from ended today's handouts pod and you can comment or ask questions by typing them into the Q&A pod. Today's Q&A discussion will take lays during and at the end of the slide presentation. You can use the four arrow icon and the menu bar in the slide presentation pod to enter and exit this little screen view. However at the top of the full-screen views to see a menu that allows you to exit it and gain access to the Q&A another pods. At the conclusion of today's webinar, we encourage all users to return to your open conservation webinar browser window to complete step two. completed a webinar provides an opportunity to -- using a five-star system and you can cement optional comments that are helpful to our webinar program. When rating the webinar, please focus on the technical training provided by today's presentation and what you learn by participating. Today's webinar offers certified crop advisers and conservation planners see you if you selected to earn CEUs when registering for today's webinar after the webinar has ended return to your open conservation webinar .net browser window and complete step two. Brief PowerPoint enter your certification and receive your certificate by e-mail. We will submit your CEUs the first of next month. You do not need to Smit them -- do not submit your planners see you as you need to meet your local certification requirement. On-demand recording by tomorrow so feel free and let your colleagues know about this opportunity. And to offer today's webinar. NRCS science and technology library and conservation webinars .net. . Getting started with our conservation webinar today I am Holli Kuykendall national technology specialist for NRCS East national technologies were country I am pleased to turn the webinar over to our first speaker Dr. Hamid Farahani. Bill wire management engineer at these national technology support center. You may now begin.
Thank you Holly and good afternoon. I hope you all can hear me. I want to say many thanks to Holly for managing and facilitating all of these. Before I start I would like to acknowledge my co- presenters, Mr. Clare Prestwich who will follow me and his and engineer. Station of West technology support center. He is part of the water quality quantity quantity quality team in Portland. And also have Mr. Leigh Nelson, recently joined. He is a seasoned irrigation engineer with it -- NRCS and recently joined national water management center here in Little Rock, Arkansas. And we also have -- we don't have with us Mr. Rob Sampson. He is what is called the national water management engineer. He is stationed at our headquarters. Conservation engineering division, and unfortunately he was -- [ Indiscernible ]. With that, our objective today is to provide a brief national view of water use and irrigation along with an overview of the main irrigation systems and the recent advances in utility. What we know is mostly expected to be of value to most field staff or our colleagues at conservation and districts particularly since most systems discussed in this webinar are supported by NRCS and are supported by our sister agencies as means of addressing inefficient use and management of water. And as you all know within NRCS that is one of our main resource concerns that we try to address with irrigation systems. Outline, we have to presenters. We have Mr. Rob Sampson to let me present his part and he kindly agreed. We were overcrowding be webinar so I will present the first two parts, we have a tight schedule here so I will go a little fast. I will be discussing water withdrawals and irrigation sticks from the national perspective and briefly talk about irrigation methods and advances in micro your duration. Claire will follow with advances in sprinkler systems and Lee will come in last with what is new in irrigation pumping. I would like to make a couple notes what we call advances that are covered in general terms and not in detail. Obviously this is very broad and and hour of webinar would not do any justice to get into details. Areas not covered, many agronomic practices, practices that have contributed to irrigation and the performance of your duration systems, for example for dry cleaning. The control erosion and soil evaporation, wastewater applications is huge component that we will not cover. Frost protection and dust suppression and also turf application, turf industry, irrigation in the turf industry again, that is the subject of a few webinars just by itself.
I would like to start by showing you some statistics, some numbers from USGS this goes back to 2010. This particular slide shows water withdrawals by category. And water withdrawals means either from surface or groundwater. The category public supply their supply irrigation, mining, industrial livestock and domestic according to this. And the way I categorize it, the table on the left shows that 48% of all withdrawals are for electric purposes. 34% irrigation followed by 11% public supply demand and adds up to about 94% of all the water withdrawn in this country from the surface and groundwater. What's interesting when you look at 48% for thermal electric purposes, you look at the known I have in the middle, consumptive use of water. The water used for thermal electric is used to perhaps over 95%, 97%. But two or 3% of it lost due to evaporation and used for cooling purposes so at times it's going -- misleading when you look at the numbers but when you look at your Jason over 70% of the water that goes into an irrigated field is in a sense returned to the atmosphere through evaporation and [ Indiscernible ]. Irrigation is indeed a great user of freshwater resources. At the bottom I have a couple of other statistics, irrigation withdrawal in 2010. 9% less than 2005 and withdrawals for irrigation in 2010 where the lowest since before 1965 so we have reduced the withdrawal at least according to some of these statistics. We're looking at a map of the US. Looking at major ground and surface water users in the US. Obviously as you expect the majority of the users, big-time users are in the West. And you can see the -- perhaps the Midwest and Northeast are the smallest users. California leads the nation by -- 35 million gallons per day of withdrawal him. This is surface and groundwater. The surface water withdrawals are 70%. Three fourths of all withdrawals are coming from surface and one fourth, about 20% from groundwater. I shouldn't say I did, Mr. Rob Sampson did look at some numbers here, this is some data looking at irrigated acreage in the US. From 2013 farm and ranch irrigation survey published by [ Indiscernible ] added as you can see here, 2008 and 2013, data shows that we are about 55 55 million acres of your gated land. What was interesting was the amount of water applied. In 2008 it was 95 million acre-feet and in 2013 it was about 88. I did a little calculation that the yellow rating is right -- mine, I converted that acre-feet 2 feet of water so that is 1.66. 1.66 is the average amount of water applied on a given farm on an average firm. And that translates to 19.9 or about 20 inches and in most cases these are seasonal applications on the average looking at the whole nation about 20 inches of water. And if you look at 2015, that 19.9 dropped to 19.2, so we have made some progress in long-term, maybe greater progress than we have seen. If you look at the state, it looks like some on slide -- slides that shifted run. Nebraska, California, Arkansas Texas and Idaho and what was interesting here also converted the their feet applied to feet of water, and we have Nebraska, Arkansas, Texas, and Idaho between one to 1.8 feet but then California is about 3.1. I should have -- I noted the slight come I should have grabbed the data from Arizona whether this 3.1 is almost two or three times higher than some of the even Western states. Due to higher is operative demand or something else in the data. In any case, the importance of your duration, always try to express this particularly to some of my colleagues were not familiar with irrigation that irrigated agriculture covers about 16% or so of all harvested crop land in this nation. Yet produces nearly half the value of all crops. So not having irrigation you could imagine what would happen to prices of some of our -- what we buy at the grocery store.
US your gated acreage from 1900 to 2007, you see a 45-degree sharp increase, I would say from turn of the century until early 70s and then it kind of plateaus at about 50 million acres irrigated. In this country. This is a nice graph, I like this one. Changing irrigation methods over time. You can see that if you pay attention to the green bar that says 1979 to 2008, 2279 we had over 60% was surface your gated. The rest was small irrigation and the rest of it was mostly sprinklers but you see that drastically has changed to 2008 now we're looking at just under 40% of surface and that is because some of the low efficiencies in that system and conversion to more efficient sprinkler and drip and what was interesting, looking at micro- irrigation looking at about 1% in 1979 and 2008 that's about 6% so we're looking at almost 500% increase in so it has been a phenomenal increase in micro- irrigation. Acreage. Expansion. Over the past few decades.
The four main year edition systems I have here surface, sub irrigation for subsurface sprinkler and micro. The sub year edition was what you all have seen, when we talk about your duration systems, we are referring to your duration methods and number one the difference between these different systems is the method of application. In surface irrigation we use the surface temperature soil for convenience probably sprinkler and micro are more localized. Take the water closest to the routes as we can and sub year edition come I took that picture in Florida. What you're looking at is a field and introduced water into the ditch and the intent is to raise the water table and then to plant between the ditches. Surface irrigation historically can go back not [ Indiscernible ] in this case but things like flooding goes back, a few thousand years BC, traces in Egypt and current Iran and Iraq. But when you look at it. Low efficiently seeing a lot of improvement a historical perspective. Schematic speaks volumes. You introduce the water at the head of [ Indiscernible ], your look at whatever your said time is 12 hours, 24 hours, so four times zero you as infiltration at the upper end of the field that the lower end of the field would have after 24 hours you might have and hour or two of infiltration at the end of the irrigation so what use the on this side is a graph of infiltrated water so we have huge or large over your duration in the upper part of the field and a significant shortage of under your geisha and over irrigation and under irrigation are both costly in yield, the cost in terms of input and the goal of most producers almost universal goal of producers is increasing the yield per unit input. That is the number one priority on farm is profit is a motive. And so to overcome some of these low efficiencies and nine uniformity's advances during the past 75 or 80 years has been the introduction of a sprinkler and micro irrigation and with that, I would like to look at a few slides on advances in micro- your duration systems. We could explore any component of micro your duration and trace it back and look at advances over years unfortunately time did not allow that but the three main types of micro your geisha, the drip is dominant was surface or subsurface drip, the micro- sprays and the bubbler systems as we say, micro- irrigation has seen in my opinion and the opinion of many is highly robust and highly efficient system, you have seen exceptional phenomenal expansion and advances in the past -- since the introduction of drip tape back in the 1950s. And I think one fascinating story about micro- irrigation is perhaps it's range of applicability to many fields, many soils, many topographies in many different crops.
What we could have done, I could not add our [ Indiscernible ] and I added some numbers and corn 55, this is about 55 gallons per season soil at that this young man, 1920s or so, doing his spot irrigation. He should -- he's got two buckets. He's going to be taking 250,000 trips of two buckets each time to hear date 1 acre of corn. And acre of corn is about 35,000 plants. Looking at that and considering the today's micro- irrigation, you can do all that with just flip infuse -- flipping a few switches. Technology has been part of our solvation and I think that speaks volumes for what irrigation has done. This is an example of a modern spot irrigation where again, the goal as a mentioned a few minutes ago, the goal is to bring the water as close as possible with that out wedding too much surface area, growth is possible to the roots of the closest we get the more management and more efficient and more uniform we can be. Listed here I talk to a couple of people, advances in micro- irrigation systems if you talk to experts they might have slightly different list and you might agree or disagree with me but this is a list and I can call it my list. It is from my perspective. When I look at micro- your geisha and, what are the key components? What are the key advances and improvements? Number one on my list would be drip tape. I think drip tape revolutionized. Everybody's using drip tape. Collapsible, that's what it is and also recently we have these pressure compensating versions so you could take it into more rolling topography. Falsely used an annual crops, and advances we have seen significant improvements in hydraulics, pressure pumping types, non- clogging types, and in particular in manufacturing. With advances in plastics and manufacturing, they have reduced the coefficient of variation to less -- much less than 3%. And then add significantly to our uniformity. Had a significant advance, automation control and [ Indiscernible ] systems, flow control, air vacuum, pressure valve, and on top of that you add all the advances in microcontroller -based automation, with real-time feedback from some sensors out in the field that send a signal, I am drawing out, that is passed on to the relay and the valve comes on. Using that to say when to turn the system on or turn it off. I was watching a system at Clemson University this gentleman put together and that particular drip irrigation system was water melons. They came on seven times in one given day and I was just not one day, that was multiple days during the summer. As soon as -- the way he had the threshold set, it is virtually impossible for us to do that manually, to turn the system on and off and we can't even collect the data fast enough and analyze it so a great advance I see on that front. Filtration and chemical injection systems again finally we have advances in terms of understanding the science, I think we have also advanced in offering a range of low flow high flow filters with the screen filters, applicable to different water sources and in particular I should mention automatic flushing and cleaning. That has come along with some of these systems that are becoming commonplace on many advanced micro irrigation systems. If I have to list after drip tape, list the significant advancement, the micro- irrigation system, I think I would say subsurface drip irrigation. It is really a more defined and practical root zone water and nutrient management or as close as we can come to it, it has seen a significant expansion and if it is properly installed and taking care of, documents showing that it could last 20 plus years. And it really removes that -- all the stuff on the surface, you have a varied and it's moving gradually over the past decade into rural crops. Who would've thought you're getting, putting SDI such an expensive capital investment in for instance you're getting corn and cotton in Texas and many other places but apparently those guys are making money, otherwise they wouldn't do that. Precision lateral placement in SDI, advancements in GIS and technologies. I mentioned recyclable material, a lot of drip tapes you see people use it one season and that's pretty much the norm for production. Last but not least I would say this whole advance has had to come to -- wrapped around in a package and that availability and affordability and flexibility and range of applicability, the robust design tools and installation and cost installation service they'll have come together and I think it's going to be an error for micro your geisha and then I've listed some of the range. I will show you a few examples. Blueberries. That may be omens. Strawberries, I really like this is an engineer, engineers like straight line so anytime I see raised beds with plastic covers it is fascinating. And ornamentals. Tomatoes, under plastic. Onions, cotton, surface drip, grapes, wide variety of applications, high tunnels, this is a big part of our practices that we promote, and SDI, just want to show you this slide on the left. On the right-hand side, what is called a lateral coming off this PVC. And most fascinating I think is this graph and I hope it is clear, it is the one on the left-hand side which is really showing me -- you have to get closer to see the water that has moved, the water pattern or the wedding front. We cannot get any closer than this to bringing the water and the nutrients to the roots them the system. To ensure that we can adequately bring water to the surface for germination purposes I think SDI is probably one of the most robust systems that we have had at least in terms of fundamental and hopefully some of the complications can be worked out over time.
I'm going to move a little faster. So I leave time for my colleagues. I just want to mention point sourcing meters, significant advances and you talk about non- clogging pressure compensating types and these prayers and many sprinklers, these are high-volume, 3-gallon per hour to about 30 and that's the highest you can get in most of micro systems. Lay flat. You could -- this has been -- this collapsible type has had its own advances and own success stories. Looking at on the right-hand side you can see that it can be a manifold on the left-hand side, it can be a submarine. They had control, this is where the biggest system or you have your filters, your pump, your accumulation tanks and all the controls and I don't have pictures, I did not included but small systems, all of that now fits on a small trailer and moved from side to side. Filters again significant advances here. I won't be spending too much time on this particular -- and screen filters and media filters. But I just want to show you this automatic self-cleaning filters, I was in Florida looking at this pumping station and that's about a 2400, 2500-gallon pumping out of a lake. And I noticed the automatic self-cleaning screen filter, this red contraption and I have it open on the side and you see the brushes inside, I don't know if they continuously move or they, periodically but it's just going to clean the filter from inside. On an automatic basis. Automatic controls, these are some of the smaller ones for small systems but obviously there are all for various sizes. Air valves, if you think two is enough, three is better, because they are cheap, particularly if you have SDI system. If the pipe rises, just put one on and there are all kinds of others, air or vacuum and I want to talk to about -- a few more slides and then I am done. Some of the low-tech and it has been low-pressure or gravity and drip irrigation. Particular system that was put together it was 1 acre prepackaged system by John Deere water. They don't exist any more. But a good deal of those were sent to Afghanistan and they do wonders for small-scale holders. I think that particular drip line worked with about a one or two PSI. And here is an extension of that. Some people are capturing the water and they are using gravity to the slope pressure gravity drip your geisha and. To feed it back into route command irrigation. I will not take too much time, this just came out from brand-new from [ Indiscernible ] and it is a drip your geisha and system, it works on a different hydraulics. There's porous tubing made by DuPont so a joint process. And this course tubing runs at about a one or one and a half PSI and we get a pressure differential or for other reasons across the boundaries, it is installed like SDI and you get a pressure differential and it's third oozing out it looks like a soaker to, but this is not a soaker tube. It is a great advantage at least -- I'm not promoting this particular system, I am just using it here for your information purposes in this particular system, this company is promoting something that could be used in conjunction with a center pivot or some odd shaped field.
NRCS we do have a micro- irrigation design tool, a fantastic model, I use it everyday and I I love it, planted against some fancy models from the manufacturers and it was right on and it is available, my last slide I just want to say with all these advances advantage, we have seen another systems I think our next of advances be not only systems themselves and equipment but also in with us called sensitive -based agriculture and operate in a tactical mode based on real-time feedback mechanism field. With that I think very much. And I apologize to my co- presenters if I went over. I would like to pass on to Mr. Clare Prestwich please.
I will talk about surface irrigation and sprinklers. Surface irrigation is -- has been around for a long -- one time. First there was a flood system. These are still used in certain situations called wild flood, you block the water up and let it run over the ground and -- any which way can. We made a lot of improvements and son. One of the best is for rose. Lots of different styles depends a lot on the crop what they're growing. They have made a lot of progress with the style and shape of the beds also. Some of the best things, orders, borders are very efficient and very easy to use. If you get the with rate, there's nothing better than a good order system. Some things we have been playing around now with our contour levy. Get down into rice country these are used a lot. There is a little bit of slope to them but not a lot and a lot of places now they are to [ Indiscernible ] level. That can be basin. You fill it up you fill any water that that is applied. Is very efficient. As you can see here you can grow anything under them. Another new system. Out here. That they are experiment with is called a Green Bag system and what you can't see is there is a structure right there and they stop of the structure, water comes down this ditch and flows out to either side. And fills up like a basin and that is a certain amount of time than they opened the gate and flows down to the next one and all the water drains back from the fields on either side to the ditch and flows down to the next one. These are also very efficient. There's lots of different ways of controlling water out onto the field. They can have little notches in the ditch, your dishes can be concrete or Earth or some type that -- textile plastic material. Siphon tubes, these can be anywhere from a half-inch in diameter up to 6 inches in diameter. You can have multiple ones. Gated pipe, a rigid plastic the gates are adjustable to allow water in and out and probably pipe. It's a flexible pipe. Use for one or two seasons at the most. You roll it out, fill it up with water and then you punch in the gate depending on what spacing or how many you need and how much water you need out of them. Some using now is a riser system. You can see here these risers, they go all the way down to the field, when you don't want any water coming out of them you put the top on. If you what water country go you pulled it will call water flows out until you have an affinity put them back down and go down to the next.
One of the problems with surface irrigation is erosion. There can be quite a bit of erosion, it is bad for the field. Bad for the water quality. But one of the innovations now is called Pam. You can apply Pam and see the two cylinders here and here. This one is without Pam and this one is with Pam. It tends to settle out all the sediment and put the little trust on the surface of the referral or were are you are using it to prevent erosion. It works very well. Probably the biggest innovation in surface irrigation has been the laser level. Surface irrigation is dependent upon the surface of the ground to deliver the water. The more level it is, the better the application event. And with the event of the laser level and where they are readily available now meaning of commerce worth have their own, they can touch up the field when it needs it. This has been the biggest advances first the surface irrigation. As you can see here, all done and ready for irrigation. Flow measure. Flow measurement now is also very important. Lots of different ways of measuring flow now. This is important so we know how much water we are putting on. Surface irrigation is has tended over the years not to worry so much about it but now it has become more important so there's lots of different methods now of measuring water on the fields. One of the other big advances in surface irrigation is automation. First was surge irrigation was developed. And surge irrigation is basically sending pulses of water down the field, having a break between pulses were the water can infiltrate the surface forms, a seal and so it helps the water advance faster in the field. This got hard to do manually so they developed automatic valves. Like this one right here. Switches the water flipside to side, based on the timing use that for the different surgeons. Switch decide on for and hour and then shut it off and put someone on the side and this controller here does it automatically for you. After so many surges, a lot of the valves have a setting where they can open both sides of the same time, so what happens there is you have what is called a cutback flow. You have an advanced flow which is larger amount of water to keep the water down the field once it is dumb field you go back to a cut flow which is less water, just enough to keep the for rose full. Some of the other automatic controls, we have timers, automatic gates that will let the water move down, etc.. Some of the things now are sensors, they place the centers of the bottom of the field. A depth sensor like the one on the right, this one right here, or to be a soil moisture sensor like this one and when the water gets down there, it signals to the sensor, back to the control of there at the head of the field. And the control can be used to shut the water off or control the pump. The pump can be controlled either on and off, turn it on or off through these controls. Their are a lot of advances in this area right now.
The other thing, tail water recovery. We don't want to lose any of the water if we can help that's a lot of places now are putting collection systems collecting the water that might run off. And they collected and they pump it back to be used on a field again. These are some of the advances of surface irrigation. There is and RCS has a bunch of tools out here to help with the design of the surface irrigation. The first one is a faucet. This one helps you with the poly pipe and determine size of the opening and the spacing that you need to apply the water to your particular situation. Would have surface, surface water irrigation design system and it helps you layout your field and helps you determine your set times and the amount of water you need. The other one is windsurfer. We have three of them from these tools, windsurfer has a lot of different things in it. You can analyze something an existing system, designed the new system or you can model the system. All of that is available in windsurfer and so these are the tools that are available for force. Moving onto sprinkler systems. Star with a pivot. More common Renault it has become the leader of the pack. Lots of different options of pivots that can be as short as one tower or as big as of two and half a mile or more. So a lot of variation with them. [ Indiscernible ] is one of the main things driving in some areas. This stands for low-energy precision application. Verdun to 6 pounds or less. It's just dropping the water rate down on to the ground. Generally in a furlough type situation. Hugh or not you're getting the whole area with the system. It has some requirements. Because you're not spreading the water out of puts on a very high application rate, which can tend to create erosion and you need some way to fill that. 'S though they need to be on very flat ground, you need to go in a circle and you need to have some kind of surface storage to hold the water to infiltrate. Some other things with pivots, that are pretty neat, they can be in any -- lots of different heights for them. Pretty much any crop. They even make some that have a dual arm coming out of the same pivot point shallow rooted crops like carrots. You can put on a lot of water, you can put on real fast. Total pivots, you are not sure you're going to need a Field, you can use eight mobile fields, the different types there are ways of moving them around. Corner systems if you have irregular shaped field or some areas that you want to pick up swingarm at the end of the pivot and swing out and pick up a bunch of extra acreage. The diagram down for shows some of the possibilities. If you have an obstacle in there in your field, or you've got real on shaped piece the corner system might be what you need. They have articulated pivots now, they have joints so that they can operate as a full pivot to a certain point and they can break and swing around and cover the rest of the field. Basically you have some kind of a connection there but it's not a solid connection. This field here is showing, it has to joints in it. When you can see one joint right here, rid of at the end and there are some other joint raise your so it can pick up a very odd field and pick up a lot of acres. Generally when you have something like a joint or pivot or corner system or something like that they need some kind of guidance system were to open up and how to move. Used to be a very lawyer system, there was a lot of problems with the wires. A lot of them and probably most of them now have gone to TPS systems and every once in a while they lose GPS signal in your pivot does not know where to go. Lots of different nozzles. This is a spray type, no moving parts, different shape pads and some of them have multiple paths like this one right here. Has up to three pads to spray the water out. We have the [ Indiscernible ] type, it can be operated in different modes. Double mode, aerated will mode, spray mode or [ Indiscernible ] mode. Wobbler type, these oscillate, they don't spin as we typically think of around a circle. I can oscillate back and forth and a random pattern. Very efficient nice watering system. Here again, various sizes and shapes depending on what you are trying to do. Then there is the spinner type. A rotating type. And they have a bunch of different nozzles available here, depending on what you're trying to do and what your application is. All of the different sprinklers come with different pads. They can be smooth, deep grooves, multiple types of groups, a lot of times they're actually even tailoring each of them to a specific crap. Here again, a lot of advance in this. Big guns, impact sprinklers, a lot of change in the us. Low angles, they even have Dragon line, they hit your blinds onto the pivots now and irrigate that way. And you also find some very innovative novel Salter. It is a glove tied on to the nozzle. Variable speed pivots that can be invariable applications and speed the pivot up and slower and then depending on where you are at apply different water months from each of the novel. They're control begin with GPS and valves in nice neat things. Base stations are -- a lot of improvements on these. You can upgrade it all from your ranch headquarters. Radio controls on the pivots, and you even get it so you can access everything on your cell phone so you can be anywhere and control your pivot. Linear's, here again fairly pivots and circles, the biggest thing with them is you have to have some kind of water source like from a ditch. This one works off a pipeline and it has automatically moves from one riser to the next and has this little rate here that hooks onto the next riser and then detaches from the last riser. Most of them know are post drag. They hooked to a hose. Lots of different layouts. We have booms, they are a smaller linear only they work by a cable, a cable pulls the boom across the field and they move around like the big gun. Here's wheel lines, available still a good option. They have a mover there that moves the wheel line. You rotated around a couple times down to the next riser. And lots of different options with them. Big guns, they come in lots of different varieties and shapes and sizes and it is a big nozzle but spray is lots of water. Lots of green water. If it's green don't -- they are used a lot for animal waste application. Also used a lot for dust suppression. Hand lines, solid or moved. Nothing like moving a hand line in a new Greenfield where you sync up your crotch in mud trying to pack one of those pipes. They also come with some different options. K line is one of the new ones. It the poly pipe, little sprinklers in the pods. Space according to what you need to move those four wheeler and drag them around. The pot is there to protect the sprinkler and to keep it from tipping over. Floppy, this is a newer one. Alternative South Africa. They suspended over the field and it has something like a little surgical tube the pops up out of the sprinkler and flips around. Makes a very unique pattern of water that is fun. If you get a chance, and that one and try it out on your yard.
Like Hameed said [ Indiscernible ]'s we have a bunch of tools, available. [ Indiscernible ] was developed by ARS. Built by the University of Nebraska. We also have designed sheets like to do porn, 1% of pivot and one to periodically move which can be wheel line or hemline or whatever like that. With that I know it is fast but I will turn the time over to Leigh.
Okay Clare catch her breath. You are going. I'm going to cover pumping.
Leigh, the slides are up on my computers.
I can see it. They are up.
all I see is a blue screen. Feedback might want to try the join URL and come back in.
I don't have time for that.
I think we addressed most of the questions. If it was a complete it was in adequate, please let us know. Clare have one question that talk about their sitting beautiful question. Which NRCS website were you referring to for surface irrigation?
I've got the 104 the tool -- and eight site that is the hardhat area. That is the one I sent over.
The surface irrigation tool are all available through the IT people. All programs and reinstalled on the machine.
I have it up, I can see. Here we go. Pumping. We only have a few minutes left. Plumbing is used on about 34 million of the 55 million acres in the US there is about 600,000 pounds. Or 54,000 farms based on the 2012 census. Which is for pumps perform his average. And again the average about 56 acres per pump. 70% are Wells nationwide and $4400 so it's quite a bit of money pumping. Three parts to the pump, get my arrow out here. The main drive power unit the drive you can see the direct, we will -- this was direct drive in the pump is down below and centrifugal pump is with this one is. Most of the power units in the US are electric or diesel, mostly electric. The cheapest source of energy we can add for the energy to get out. A little bit of natural gas, propane and gas. The drive correct drivers connected right to 100% of the power from the motor gets to the pump. Turbines or diesel drive. Multiple belt, they are cheap but they do have -- in the friction. And then the flood built, you don't see those very much any more. Direct drive, connected right to the pump at a right angle. All the power goes right and to the pump. This is a turban, the casing, great angle, here's a right angle, power unit. Right angle drive and down into a wealth in the water is pumped back up. The build type. Centrifugal's. Probably of the two most common, we do see submersibles. In some of the smaller ones. Down in the well. The high-volume and and positive displacement. We see those those high-pressure. Or injection types. We want their pressure, measure volume. Different types of pump used and this is something chapter of the [ Indiscernible ]. A cross-section of in the impeller. Ginae comes in here not there. The goal, they can be vertical or horizontal. Depends on your area of what you'll see the most of. The vertical months or horizontal, either way. By the motor on the top. A chef down to the pump which is under the water. Is a shaft in the pipeline is our -- out and takes the water out. Real deep depths with these. In the motor, is on top again. The pump could be five or six or 7 feet underground. To chef disconnecting it and in order to get for [ Indiscernible ]. submersibles a similar type thing. And then it pump on top and the chef don't type out in order to get the water out. And positive type. Because of the propeller in the bottom and the shift, motor shaft propeller and list the water up to the service. Usually for Lord high-volume. And positive displacement. Piston pump the pulse every time he goes through it pump that same volume. If you want more you speed it up and if you want more pressure you get bigger distance. You have centrifugal -- turbine pump here and booster pump, centrifugal here, there is a storage -- storage pond and a number pumps and wells tied together so at all interlocks and all connected together but usually centrifugal is used for that. Multiple pumps, that the pumps together two or three or whatever they need together. Portable pumps, drip systems, temporary systems a lot. What is new? Pumps have been used for years and years, the newest things that I've seen is the super efficiency motors. Right now the worst you get is energy efficient. For the energy program we are going to push the super E motors. Hi fish and sea. Hiram -- not a huge difference, does make a difference efficiency change. there better for -- for drive on them. Inverter duty type motors.
There is a good quartermaster, download this later, the slides to get it. SharePoint, all the points available and never found one he couldn't find that all the pumps, this is another good site for that. You can read the poem name model and impeller diameter on the pump itself. Variable frequency drives or variable speed drives, we are starting to see a lot of those in order to be able to control the pressure or the flow or whatever it is you want to control. A computer for the motor and pump to be able to do this so you can maintain a certain pressure. There a lot safer, a soft start. No real surge. It slows down and speeds up the pressure change. This is the control and this is the panel, it is one thing monitoring and you turn it up or down. High or low pressure. They can say power, they save time, they can be connected to the web, all that stuff. Prices going down. It is much to filter. There is a note again. A tech note oh four drives you could see with the benefits are. You want to evaluated because they they do take energy. Controls, all kinds of wireless controls. To be able to monitor to see what is happening. Energy program we do have energy as a resource concern with NRCS so make sure it -- if it saves energy be sure included in there for that so you can get that. And just different percentage drive efficiency and then any questions. 26 seconds to go and I am through. Thanks Holli.
Would you like to make a few concluding comments?
I just want to thank everybody. I would just that impressed all these good questions. One question you addressed, some answers if it is inadequate, our e-mails are listed here as you can see e-mail us, we would love to hear from you. And there was one question I think you answered, with PQA questions, we'll be published with the webinar. And I don't recall any question that we left unanswered. Whether we answer them all correctly, that's a different story. But that is all I have for today. Unless clear or leafy to -- wish to --
I would just like to say thanks and if you have questions please contact us. I am pretty quick.
That was pretty quick. Feel free to contact us.
This is Holli and we do have -- we were able to export the Q&A log and we will clean that up and we can post that on the webinar webpage when we post the replay. The Q&A will be a couple days later but we will do our best to get that posted. And with that, I want to thank everybody for participating and to making the presentation will everybody know we had about 260 people join today's webinar so it was another packed house. Participants to provide your feedback about the webinar or if you selected to earn CEUs please return to your open browser window to continue the process by step to the conservation webinars .net and with that this concludes our webinar presentation today. [ Event Concluded ]