THE IRRIGATION AGR. 205 



It is wonderfully easy to make a mistake. The chances are 

 twenty to one that you will not do the best you could. Make careful 

 inquiry for successful plants. Learn all about them. How far they 

 raise the water. Look up size of suction and discharge pipes. Don't 

 waste $5 per day against a needless friction head. That would pay 

 interest on 10,000 of added investment. Measure water over a wier. 

 Don't guess at it. Find just what fuel is used to raise one miner's 

 inch one foot, and if you find cost of fuel more than one cent for five 

 feet of lift per miner's inch for twenty-four hours, look farther. 

 Assume that you need not have any service but the best within 

 reasonable limits and those reasonable limits have very probably 

 been already well established by the best practice within 100 miles of 

 your own well. Look them up. 



Perhaps the simplest plan would be to go to these good dealers. 

 Lay before each in writing the exact facts, viz: depth of well; level of 

 water; drop when pumped for the amount of water you have found 

 you need and the well will yield. To this end you should in every 

 case have your well tested. It will be the best 100 you spend in the 

 whole undertaking. No good dealer will take the risk of such an 

 untested well, and you are obliged to do so, a very unsafe risk, often 

 costing a man more than 1,000 to save 50 or 100, which would have 

 made him secure. 



Ask each dealer to prescribe the best plant he can furnish you 

 for such conditions, and to refer you to one or more such installations. 

 Then go to see them. Take all the time you need. You will gain 

 enough valuable information to richly repay you. Take the state- 

 ment of facts, your three presumptions and your observations of all 

 of them to one of the best four consulting hydraulic engineer in 

 Southern California, and get his advice, and aid, in redrawing the 

 plans or in acceptance of one of the offers. Then have your lawyer 

 draw the contract throwing all construction responsibility upon the 

 dealer. 



Such a course is not a cheap method, but it is a good one; almost 

 sure to be successful and the extra cost will not exceed 100 for all 

 the care and insurance against disappointment. 



Beware of a junk heap. I can point you to piles of junk bought 

 by honest men from honest men. They did not take precautions. 

 You cannot be too careful. 



One more caution. I know a community which has made up a 

 purse and is now sinking a well. There is excellent promise of 

 plenty of water at 200 deep. Very little expectation that it will be 

 nearer the surface. They will need to lift it 200 and 50 feet higher 

 to cover the main orchards. They can get the well down for 400 

 less. But there is no portable well testing machine to tell them 

 whether they have much or little water. They want much. There- 



