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Agricultural Irrigation
design & consulting
Spare Engineering aims to encourage users of agricultural irrigation water to operate sustainably while achieving high crop productivity and maintaining high water use efficiency and energy efficiency.
Spare Engineering, operated by Dan Spare, serves agricultural producers by designing irrigation systems, evaluating existing irrigation facilities and providing developers of new irrigation technology collaborative assistance in moving products to market.
Sub-Surface Drip Tape is buried in the soil and provides water to two corn rows here.
Sub-Surface Drip Installation with off-takes from supply line up to the tapes.
Sub-Surface Drip Tape is buried in the soil and provides water to two corn rows here.
About Spare Engineering
Dan Spare
B.S. Agricultural Engineering, Kansas State University, 1976
M.S. Agricultural Engineering, University of Hawaii, Manoa, 1978
M.S. Environmental Engineering, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1999
For over 40 years Dan Spare has served farmers and agricultural producers in developing and managing water resources. He has served others across the high plains and western USA plus Nepal, Bangladesh, Philippines. His collaborators have been as varied as small farm families to large agricultural entities. In each situation he has partnered with project owners to produce a strategic and effective solution.
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Mr Spare is a Technical Service Provider under the USDA/NRCS program and has utilized this credential in providing certified designs for numerous projects under the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). He also maintains Professional Engineer licensure in several states, including Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Services
We focus on agricultural irrigation and water management.
Below are examples of the types of work that Spare Engineering has performed.
Sub-Surface Drip Irrigation
Subsurface Drip Irrigation (SDI) systems deliver water into the soil via emitters located below the soil surface and in the crop rootzone. By the use of SDI, crop canopy evaporation and wet soil evaporation are minimized, thus permitting high water use efficiency, and stretching or preserving available water supplies. SDI systems can be designed for different shaped fields, thus are not limited to circular or rectangular fields.
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We have designed SDI systems for agricultural producers in Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado for field sizes from a few acres up to over 100 acres.
Center Pivot Irrigation Systems
Center pivot irrigation systems uniformly apply water to circular fields by means of sprinklers with increasing nozzle size as radius increases. Water is provided to the center pivot machine often via a well located beside the pivot point, but in other instances from remote locations in which cases buried pipelines are provided for water delivery. Among the many factors to be considered in such designs are water quality, relative elevations from water delivery to end of system, available water pressure, available water flowrate, and crops to be grown.
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We have designed new systems and rehabilitated older center pivot systems in order to optimize available water and energy resources.
Pumping Plant Evaluations
Over time irrigation pumping plant performance degrades, often slowly and imperceptibly. Also, some changes occur that result in less-than-optimal performance. A thorough pumping plant evaluation can identify specific improvements which the farmer or producer can implement. Such evaluations examine various potential improvements and costs and calculate the relevant payback periods for consideration by the producer.
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We have conducted many of such pumping plant evaluations over the years. Most of these studies have identified significant potential improvements that, once implemented, would result in payback periods of only a few years.
Fruit and Nut Tree Irrigation
Much nut and fruit production is facilitated in areas where the climate is dry and where irrigation water supplies are available. A variety of irrigation methods are utilized, based on the type of tree.
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We have designed irrigation systems for pecan, pistachio, apple and other types of orchards.
Big Gun Irrigation
Soil Moisture Technology
Big Gun Irrigation systems are often used in pastures in mountainous area and are suitable where property boundaries are somewhat irregular and where the topography is variable. Big Guns are also used in numerous other applications such as in dust control in arenas, and in mining applications.
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We have designed Big Gun systems for various situations, including mountain pastures and effluent applications.
The determination of water in the soil profile has been an essential component of irrigation scheduling. Many technologies are used in the measurement of soil moisture in the crop root zone. For several decades, the neutron probe has been the gold standard to measure soil moisture in a single point of a field. More recently other technologies are being developed to provide more practical and useful assessments of soil moisture for use in irrigation scheduling models.
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We have used numerous methods of assessing soil moisture and have developed on-site telemetry for delivering soil moisture readings to a central location for decision making purposes.
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