212 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



APPENDIX "B." 



PUMPS FOR IRRIGATION. 



Woodland, Cal.," Maples," August 29, 1886. 

 General N. P. Chipman, Red Bluff: 



Dear Sir: Yours of the twenty-sixth instant at hand and noted. My 

 "irrigating plant," complete, cost about $3,000; and the two important 

 things about works of this kind are: First, the pump, and then the fur- 

 nace. A furnace should be so constructed that you can use anything that 

 will burn for fuel. I ran about two weeks on the primings of orchard and 

 vineyard this Spring, and we had no trouble in making steam with them. 

 I need not enlarge on this — you will see at once. A pump throwing the 

 most water with a given power, and the fuel that costs the least, and a 

 good furnace that burns straw, wood, brush, stumps, sawdust, or coal, is 

 about what we want in this valley. My pump is one of the centrifugal 

 kind — Heald & Cisco, Albany, N. Y. — and is advertised to throw four 

 thousand seven hundred and fifty gallons per minute. I don't know if it 

 does that or not, but a better way is to measure the ditch, and there we 

 find it measures eight feet, according to the rule for water in this county. 

 That is, where the water went through a flume four feet wide and two feet 

 deep, and at the rate of one foot per second, and this pump did that by 

 actual measure, and the speed was a little more than one foot per second. 

 That stream cost me for a day of twelve hours: One engineer, $3 per day 

 and board; one and one half cords of wood at $4 per cord, and oil, etc., say 

 $1, making $10 for a day of twelve hours. Burning straw, three good loads 

 will do the work, but the engineer has to have a helper with a team most 

 of the time, and also with brush it takes an extra man most of the time; 

 so I count that $10 per day of twelve hours is about the cost to place the 

 water in the ditch. The matter of distributing the water in the field would 

 seem to come under another head, as so much depends on the condition of 

 the ground and how well it has been prepared for irrigating. I generally 

 get along with one man in the field, and he a $30 per month man. 



Irrigating orchard trees, I think with everything ready we can wet down 

 ten or twelve acres per day, and do it well; vines, a little more than half 

 that much; on clover ground we don't get over near so much, unless the 

 ground is very even and the stubble short and clean. But we put it on 

 quite freely, fill up the squares of one fourth and one half acre. lots, till it 

 runs over the levees, some places twelve to eighteen inches deep; some 

 days I think we did from four to five acres; some days, when the grading 

 was not so well done, we would not get more than half that amount. I 

 think this pump will throw four thousand five hundred gallons per miuute 

 from the work the engineer does ; at that rate we are putting on the ground 

 one thousand and eighty tons per hour, or twelve thousand nine hundred 

 and sixty tons per day. The orchard and vineyard I have not irrigated 

 this season; did not need it. The clover I wet twice, and as a result, to- 

 morrow we begin to cut the fourth crop; I pastured it quite late, too, and 

 will have good pasture after this crop, till frost comes. 



These are the facts about my plant, its cost, and what we are doing. I 

 attribute the rather extraordinary growth of my orchard and vineyard to 

 the work of that pump; their growth has been the wonder of all who see 



