How much water (to water one acre)?

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Maybe somebody can help me with this. I'm trying to figure out how many gallons of water would be necessary to cover one acre of land one inch deep? I dont have all the info needed to figure this on my own, dont know if I could get the right answer even if I did. Hopefully one of you could clue me in. Thanks!

-- Julie (juliecapasso@aol.com), January 25, 2000

Answers

Response to How much water?

It is all in the dictionary, but roughed out it is about 580 gallons. I run about 8,000 gallons an hour on my land in the summer, 24 hours a day, you do the figuring, It is millions on gallons. Dose your question have anything to do with "Water Rights"?

-- Mudlover (redgate@echoweb.net), January 25, 2000.

Response to How much water?

Hi Julie

One Acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons. That is the amount of water in gallons that one foot of water over one acre would be. So divide 325,851 by 12 and you get 27,154.25 gallons.

Hope this helps

Scott

-- Scott Spires (spiress@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000.


Response to How much water?

One acre is 43,560 square feet. If you cover it with a foot of water, it's an acre foot, and is 43,560 cubic feet. Divide by 12, because you're only putting an inch of water on the acre; this gives you 3630 cubic feet. Multiply this by 7.48, because there are 7.48 gallons per cubic foot.Answer is 27,152 gallons. (I think Scott and I used slightly different conversion factors or something. Plus I'm doing the conversions in my head. But either one is close enough, I'd say) Boy, I hope this helped, Julie. We have given you answers ranging from 580 gallons to 27,154.25 gallons. Sorry about that. Why do you need to know? Anyway?

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), January 26, 2000.

Response to How much water?

Thanks for your answers. Im asking because we are looking to buy land in Oregons High Desert (we already live here). Irrigated land is extremely expensive (a minimum of 10,000 per acre completely undeveloped and not necessarily buildable)but unirrigated land is much cheaper because it is completely worthless. I was trying to brainstorm ways to get water on the property we are looking at but the volume of water needed is too prohibitive cost wise. We only get about 6 inches of rain a year so catchment setups arent going to supply enough. We could pay to have water trucked in but 27,000 gallons would cost about $350.00 a week to irrigate one acre. Obviously not an option. Thanks for your help however, Julie

-- Julie (juliecapasso@aol.com), January 26, 2000.

Response to How much water?

Hi, Julie,

It may be worse than you think. :(

I think you probably would need enough water to cover the acre with more like 36 inches of water, in order to do a summer crop. Check with the water master, or possibly with the extension agent, if they have ac clue.

However, maybe you could drill a well. Even a five gallon per minute well would produce over 7000 gallons per day, if it was a solid five which would keep producing five all day for days at a time.

Another consideration: check with the watermaster to see if you can get water rights for a well. I believe that you will find that in Oregon you can't irrigate more than 1/2 acre without water rights, and it may or may not be possible to get water rights on your well. If the well is within a quarter mile of a stream, for instance, you may have to prove that the aquifer the well is in does not drain into the stream. They are getting very difficult to deal with.

Water is a fascinating topic, but it sometimes takes a bit more research than we may want to undertake.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), January 28, 2000.



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