Basic drip irrigation
Basic drip irrigation is easy to install once you understand how it works and what are its limitations. Drip can cover a large area provided the supply lines are large enough to get the water to the emitters. That’s one of the limitations. Also, the drip system delivers water right to the plant and nowhere else. The drip system irrigation is going to help you cut your water consumption. Especially important in the largest consumer of water, your yard. The drip system puts the water where it needed and nowhere else.
So where can I use a drip system?
A drip system waters plants whether they be in beds or in rows like a vegetable garden. This is an excellent use for a drip system.
How about my lawn?
Drip systems do not really adapt well to lawn use. The drip system parts are really meant to be on top of the surface. Let’s stick to the plant beds or vegetable garden.
All Drip Irrigation Parts at – Amazon.com
What Do I need to know?
You will need to know what is the size of the pipe(from the house) that will deliver the water to the drip system. The size of the pipe will decide how many emitters you will be able to put on a single run. Your pipe can come in three sizes. There is the 1″ pipe, the 3/4″ pipe and the smallest pipe, the 1/2″ pipe. You will need to know the smallest pipe that will feed your drip system from where it comes into the house and to your control valve.
Water in gallons per hour equals total emitters on a single station.
Emitters are rated in gallons per hour. Ok, you can use engineering to find out the exact flow in gallons per hour of your house water. But I like a shortcut so here is a flow chart GPM/GPH Flow based on PVC Pipe Size, look up your pipe diameter and use the yellow middle column in the chart. This assumes that everything is average. You will use the number for gallons per hour. This sets your most number of gallons all your emitters can use on one station. Using that chart a 3/4″ pipe could have 1410 one gallon emitters on one line.
About the maximum gallons per hour, be sure you don’t get to the maximum emitters on your run because your flow could be less than the chart suggests. So build in a fudge factor say ten to twenty percent of the total gallons per hour. Set your maximum emitter numbers per loop based on that number.
The parts you need
The parts you will need are a valve to control the water flow through the drip system. A pressure reducer per loop to bring the pressure into the operating range of a drip system. A screen filter to trap sand. An adapter to go from the valve to the drip hose. Ends, tees, pipe to hose adapters, sprinklers emitters, and flag emitters.
To set up a drip system lets add one to an existing sprinkler system. If you have an existing circuit that you want to convert to a drip system you will need a pressure reducer. It needs to go into the system after the control valve. It needs to be able to be replaced as they will go bad from time to time. So a union after the pressure reducer is recommended.
Where ever the existing sprinklers come out of the ground we will need an adapter from the pipe thread of the PVC to hose of the drip system.
Let’s talk emitters
All 2gph flag emitters Amazon.com
I like the kind that you can take apart to clean. These are flag emitters. Emitters need cleaning often. Hard water builds water scale that will plug up emitters. So for me, the use of a soaking hose type emitter and any emitter that cannot be taken apart for cleaning is not a good choice. So if you have hard water scale buildup in your home, emitters that cannot be taken apart for cleaning may plug up in a year or so and will need to be replaced. Actually, the flag emitter can be cleaned just by rotating the flag one full turn. No disassembly required.
One other thing, I like the flag emitters that have a locking type flag. It uses a small notch in the main body to disassemble. These type of flag emitters will not come apart under pressure.
I use 2 gph emitters to shorten sprinkler controller runtime. What do I mean by this? A 2gph emitter will need 1 hour of run time to give the plants 2 gallons. A 1/2gph emitter will need 4 hours to give the plants the same amount of water.
Let’s talk 1/2″ Tube
First, there is no standard for 1/2″ drip tube. The tube measurement uses the outside diameter. There are currently three sizes of this 1/2″ tube. There is the .620″, .670″, and the .700″ sizes. You will need to pick a 1/2″ tubing size. Remember the tubing size. All your tubing fittings must match your tube’s dimension. Use the most popular tube size in your area. Then you will have easy access to emergency repair parts.
All 1/2″ drip tubing – Amazon.com
To Cover or not to cover
I don’t like my drip system covered. I need to be able to see all the parts before things go wrong. Yes I know, covering it will make the beds look neater. But remember these are small parts and sometimes things break. Then you will need to fully inspect the entire system to find out where things have broken, plugged up, or in my case my wife has cut the tubing with the hedge trimmer again. The drip system needs to be fully inspected regularly.
Layout your system
Before you buy any drip irrigation parts lay out your system. Use a water hose of known length and layout your system. This way you will know how many feet of 1/2″ hose you will need. When you are laying out your system note where you will need 1/4″ hose to get the emitters to the plants. Try to minimize these 1/4″ runs. I find that over time these small hoses take the most abuse and require the most work to keep working properly. As you lay out the hose count how many emitters are going on that system. By now you should know:
- How many feet of 1/2″ tubing you will need.
Orbit DripMaster 67790 4-in-1 Drip Irrigation Valve – Amazon.com
- The number of emitters needed.
- How many feet of 1/4″ tubing you will need.
- How many drip systems loops your system will have.
- The number of control valves needed.
- How many pressure reducers.
- How many ends, adapters, etc. needed.
There you have it, all the information you need to install a drip system in your yard. Soon you will reduce your water use. You will also reduce the growth of weeds in the yard. What will you do with all that extra time on your hands?
Related Articles: Articles About Drip Irrigation
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