Drip irrigation

[Modern homesteader]

Anyone using it? I have a garden that is about 15 100ft rows and I would like to run a main line down the length of my garden with emitter tubes branching off and running down each row. In the past with soaker hose and such I never had enough pressure and would end up with very little water emitting towards the end of the hose.

[Happy Wags]

Well, I can tell you this... With that much you will need to at least break it into zones and then it will still matter what your water pressure to emitter (or soaker hose) ratio is. I don't use soaker hoses (I like watering some things more than others) but instead use variable emitters in my front yard (much smaller than your garden space). I have my yard split into 4 zones with about 15-25 emitters per zone. Again though, I use variable emitters so if I have a bunch barely trickling drips of water I can maybe get 30 to 35 if I push it but I can get better consistency by just adding a zone. Plus, I change out plants and such so having the ability to adjust the water is necessary for me.

http://misterlandscaper.com/products/294-drip-irrigation-tubing-adjustable-dripper-drip-sprayer.aspx = Variable 1-10 gallon dripper


Now if you are using soaker hoses like this http://misterlandscaper.com/products/268-drip-irrigation-tubing-14in-100ft-12incouplers.aspx then you are using a half gallon per foot of hose and in a 100' bed, that means it will take 50 pounds of pressure to fully utilize that hose. If you only have 60 - 70 pounds of pressure total (not untypical for a US household) then by the time you run two hoses at the same time, you are already past proper pressure to get a consistent watering from the full length of both hoses. (I know nothing of fluid dynamics and the like and am sure this may be a bit off, this is just how it was explained to this simple mind )

If it were me, I would zone each bed out individually and then have them run one after another. It extends the amount of time to water but if you start with the beds you normally would work on earliest in the morning and then let the other zones water after, you can be working and not be affected by the schedule change.

I am in the process of building raised beds in the back at the moment and each will be about 12' x 4'. I will group no more than 2 beds per zone which will have me watering about 96 sq ft per zone so probably not too far off from what you are looking at. I will run a main line from the house (probably 3/4" pipe to give it as much pressure as I can) to a control box in the yard and from there will break it into zones for the beds.

[JC-DRAGON]

Agreed, splitting areas into different zoned is best. I would get a splitter along with timers (some timers can double as splitters) and go from there.