The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-07-28
INVENTION WILL
 BENEFIT FARMERS Sub-Irrigation System Saves
 Both Land and Water
From the Dallas News.

From the Dallas News.
 For the last three months the residents
 of Midland and the people of the South
 Plains generally have been watching with
 great interest the establishment at Mid
 land of an irrigated farm of kind new
 to Texas and the southwest.
 No water is seen on the farm at all.
 In place of the usual streams running
 along the dltches and laterals the surface
 of the ground is unbroken save by waving
 green crops. The water Is all under the
 ground. This new method is called sub
 irrigation"
 Numerous crude attempts have been
 made in recent years to subirrigate land
 from perforated pipes laid under the
 ground, but they all eventually proved
 failures mainly through inability to pre-
 vent the holes through which the water
 escaped from becoming choked. The sys-
 tenn in use on thes Midland farm solves
 this trouble in a very simpls way and has at last made subirrigation practical and
 successful.
 r At Midland a we'll with capacity of
 only 40 gallons a minute is used to fur
 nish water to irrigate 20 acres, a two-
 horsepower engine Is used anu the pump
 is four and a quarter working barrel
 pump. The equipment is small and mex
 pensive, owing to the small amount of water required. From the well the water is pumped first into a 250-gallon settling tank so that all foreign matter may sink to the bottom and not get into the system
 The main feed pipe running the length of the field Is four inches; from it branch out the lateral two-inch pipes through the field. These pipes are laid two feet under the ground, and the distance between the laterals is S3 feet The pipes are all con crete and machine makes and lays them In the ditch right on the field. At dis tances of three feet apart small holes are made in the top of these concrete lateral pipes the entire length of the ditch; into
 these holes while the concrete is still damp, Is inserted small rlrg with an opening the size of a pin; on top of this plug, which sticks up about two inches, is placed a concrete cap, which fits over the plug and conforms to the shape of the pipe. Where the cap fits on the pipe just
 enough. space is left for the water coming through the plug to percolate from under
 the cap and into the soil.
 The points of superiority possessed by subrrigation over surface Irrigation are
 many. the most striking being the saving in land and in water According to the l United States government engineers wher 1 20 acres of ground Is put into surface l irrigation exactly one tenth or two en- tire acres, is taken up in ditches. laterals and borders. This means that the money | spent for these two acres is absolutely l lost, because they yield not the slightest , return in crops. With subirrigation, on the other hand.- every foot of the ground l is cultivated.
 Demonstrations have proven that to subirrigate 20 acres of land requires Just | one-seventh as much water as is required to surface irrigate the same land. Over 80 per cent of the water pumped on the surface land is lost, the. majority by
 evaporation and the rest by absorption in the ground ip the ditNhes before 1t reaches the ground to be irrigated.