[Water News] DJ Gongol & Associates Water News

[Brian Gongol]

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Highlights from the past week
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Did you know it was Flood Safety Awareness Week?
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/newsletter/2009/03/16/

If you had bacon today, there was a 1-in-3 chance it came from Iowa. 
That affects the state's water supply:
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/newsletter/2009/03/17/

Federal energy grants may be difficult for Iowa and Nebraska to make use of:
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/newsletter/2009/03/18/

Communities looking to take advantage of Federal stimulus funding need 
to act quickly:
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/newsletter/2009/03/19/

Irrigation is making Nebraska's largest lake a lot smaller:
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/newsletter/2009/03/20/


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Featured product
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It's been a few years since the AWWA changed its standards to allow 
stainless steel and aluminum as approved materials for use in sluice 
gates (which are now known as "wedging slide gates"). For decades, cast 
iron was the only allowable material -- but refinements in design and 
improvements in material availability have made other materials not only 
competitive with, but in fact superior to, the long-used cast iron.

Cast iron gates obtained their strength from their sheer bulk. Stainless 
steel sluice gates, by contrast, gain their strength by virtue of their 
structural design.  This means stainless steel gates can be built much 
lighter than comparable cast iron gates, which can dramatically reduce 
installation costs and improve the quality of the installation.

Stainless steel gates have a long list of other advantages, not the 
least of which is their superior seating system: Cast iron gates rely 
upon metal-to-metal contact to provide their seal, which leaves cast 
iron gates susceptible to contamination, corrosion, and failure.

Stainless steel gates make no metal-to-metal contact at the seating 
perimeter; instead, the stainless steel plate is channeled by UHMW 
(ultra-high molecular weight) polyethylene guides, which reduces the 
amount of friction encountered when the gates are raised and lowered and 
improves the quality of the seal. As a result, stainless steel gates can 
be guaranteed to out-perform the leakage rates allowed by AWWA standards 
-- in some cases, by a factor of ten or more.

If you'd like to know more, visit 
http://www.pumpstoreusa.com/gates/sluice/ or call us at 515-223-4144 and 
ask for details.