Re: Polypipe for furrow irrigation....pics

[riceman]

Durapipe. Made in Mexico, Missouri. Ipsco in Stuttgart, AR has it too. There are others. Some is recycled like Delta Plastics but I don't think its as good as the virgin stuff.

[farmerhawg]

I had trouble with the durapipe blowing out coming off of the riser if there was any incline at all within the first 200'. my delta plastics pipe doesnt seem to have that problem as bad.

When you join to joints of pipe, how do you doi it, use a splicer or just mate the pipe?

[riceman]

Durapipe is slick and the Delta stuff is rough so that might have something to do with it blowing. Are you using the same thickness in each? Got to be some reason it is giving you fits.

When we join we take the end of the new pipe and roll it back about 7-8 feet making it double wall then cut a 3-4 foot piece of pipe to use as a band and slid it back out of the way, stuff the already laid pipe into the new pipe a few feet and then slide the band down over the joint. The pressure of the water keeps it together. Its not a perfect way but we're pretty good at it and only have had one or two blowouts in the last decade.

I don't like using short peices of hard pipe as joints. Too much stuff to carry around and pick up. Plus the water has to go back down to a smaller diameter pipe at the joint which causes backpressure and thats a bad thing with polypipe.

How do you join at the well or riser? Duck tape or hoseclamps?

[connor]

Last summer we used right at 20 rolls of 1/4 mile poly pipe. That would make for a heck of a lot of hard pipe. I'd hate to have to write the check for 5 miles of 12-15" aluminum pipe or even hard plastic for that matter.

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20 rolls per year at $200 per roll is $4000 a year you've got in that stuff. You only have to write the check once for pipe. And I don't think you'd have to get 12-15" pipe, I'm sure 8-10" would work fine. The pipe would pay for itself overtime. And like I said there's not awhole lot of maintenance to it.

[okpanhandle]

There used to be a guy in town who did nothing but repair aluminum gated pipe and related paraphernalia. He had a pretty good thing going until sprinklers took over. It's been many moons since we've had anything to do with furrow irrigation (and you couldn't pay me to go back), but when I was a kid I made several trips to the shop with Dad or Granddad to get something fixed.

Plus you have gates that get brittle in the sun and break, gaskets that leak, pipe trailer tires that are invariably flat from sitting outside all the time. Once we had lightening strike a 1/4mile string of aluminum and it put a hole on the female end of every joint right under the gasket of the adjoining pipe; not really a problem, but think if we were running a surge valve. It would have been toast. And don't get me started on PVC. Every try to pick up a 30ft joint of plastic with wet sand in the bottom? Now imagine a half mile of that. Not going to be a fun morning. We sold the last of our aluminum pipe for scrap several years ago, now we just need someone to take the plastic.

[wne8010]

I use 75 rolls of polypipe per season plus 2 miles of gated pipe. Mostly gravity fed surface water. The 15" polypipe can take way more water on the flat grades with only a foot of head pressure. I use black ajustable gates that lock into place. I think we installed about 20 thousand gates last year. It all has to be picked up in the fall. Not fun by any means but with 10" of rainfall its a neccessity.

[connor]

If you have to fix aluminum pipe then you're running into it way too much. We've got pipe nearly 50 years old. Sure you have to replace some gates and gaskets every now and then, but thats a lot cheaper than buying $200 rolls of this stuff every year. And pipe trailers are cheap, or easy to build, whichever route you want to go. Tires, no biggie air them up or find some decent used ones. Sure it's take time for the pipe to pay for itself but never the less it will. And maintenance is nothing. This only pipe we've ever had to fix are ones that we ran into accidentally.

[riceman]

20 rolls per year at $200 per roll is $4000 a year you've got in that stuff. You only have to write the check once for pipe. And I don't think you'd have to get 12-15" pipe, I'm sure 8-10" would work fine. The pipe would pay for itself overtime. And like I said there's not awhole lot of maintenance to it.

Connor my friend, feel d**n free to come on to Arkansas and you can pick the hard pipe up all summer and tote it around to all the fields we have. Oh, it'll be about 100 degrees and full sun when you are doing it.

$4000 wouldn't buy much hard pipe either...

[connor]

Connor my friend, feel d**n free to come on to Arkansas and you can pick the hard pipe up all summer and tote it around to all the fields we have. Oh, it'll be about 100 degrees and full sun when you are doing it.

$4000 wouldn't buy much hard pipe either...

I do it every summer. You don't hear me bitchin do you? All I was saying is that pipe will pay for itself in the long run. Low and easy maintenance andf cheap maintenance at that. If you can't handle a little work then stick with the sh*t you've got i guess. You're in the wrong profession is you aren't willing to break a sweat, which I'm sure you do with this stuff already anyway so I don't think some aluminum pipe should be too much more.

[riceman]

I, along with 99% of the rest of the farmers here will stick with polypipe and you can keep your hard pipe. What works there might not work here..

When everything needs watered at the same time, its kinda hard to do that if you only have a few thousand feet of hard pipe. 5 miles of 30 foot long pipe is a heck of a lot of hard pipe.. The way it is now I can water the entire farm on the same day if I want.