Budget irrigation system

[puntloos]

This stuff is hard to find online (search terms too generic). 
 

Does anyone have some suggestions around a simple irrigation system for a (front, and back) garden?

- Both front and back basically rectangle garden - grass in middle, shrubs around the borders, both about 15x10m

- One "island" planned in the rear lawn that might contain a tree or two

- Rainwater tap available (I have a collection tank)

 

Basically I'd like to install a simple system, perhaps draw a leaky hose around the perimeter? 

- Is a leaky hose a good idea or are there better systems?

- How does one update a leaky hose after it's installed (thinking of drawing a line to the "island")

- How are these things turned on/off? Or are they permanently-on?

 

Any tips welcome!

[SteamyTea]

Can you just run a normal, cheap hosepipe around the garden, block the end and then punch holes in it where you want water to come out.

I found a small holes in my pipe was brilliant at water my indoor plants when I need to water my front garden (tap at back of house).  It also washed the furniture, walls, electrical sockets....

[Alan Ambrose]

Conventional stuff is at e.g.

 

waterirrigation.co.uk

 

Some cheap no-name kits on Amazon. None of it is great imho. You typically use a water timer - check out e.g. Orbit products. I’ll write more when I get a few minutes.

[Gone West]

I've just installed two Gardena irrigation circuits in our garden. That was something I never thought I would have to do in Cornwall.

 

https://www.worldofwatering.co.uk/

 

 

[Conor]

Nothing to add to this except I'm considering the same. I've several long lengths of 16mm UFH PET pipe leftover that I was hoping to use. I'm wondering if you could use those barb fittings for hoses and drill small holes in the sections you want to water? 

[SteamyTea]

15 minutes ago, Conor said:

I'm wondering if you could use those barb fittings for hoses and drill small holes in the sections you want to water? 

Just try it, nothing much to loose really.

Not even worth procrastinating about.

[Nickfromwales]

I'm on a job where the clients went "Amazon" for the irrigation and it hasn't gone too well. The spurs with the outlets on them all pop off so you lose the spray effect. I expect this could be managed with a pressure reducing valve, so maybe prepare to install one of those onto 2 flexis and then put that inline. Having raw cold mains pressure going into these is not a good idea  

Same as everything else, buy cheap buy twice.

[Marvin]

6 hours ago, puntloos said:

This stuff is hard to find online (search terms too generic). 
 

Does anyone have some suggestions around a simple irrigation system for a (front, and back) garden?

- Both front and back basically rectangle garden - grass in middle, shrubs around the borders, both about 15x10m

- One "island" planned in the rear lawn that might contain a tree or two

- Rainwater tap available (I have a collection tank)

 

Basically I'd like to install a simple system, perhaps draw a leaky hose around the perimeter? 

- Is a leaky hose a good idea or are there better systems?

- How does one update a leaky hose after it's installed (thinking of drawing a line to the "island")

- How are these things turned on/off? Or are they permanently-on?

 

Any tips welcome!

[puntloos]

2 hours ago, Gone West said:

I've just installed two Gardena irrigation circuits in our garden. That was something I never thought I would have to do in Cornwall.

 

https://www.worldofwatering.co.uk/

 

 

Any chance you can provide me with a spec of what you bought? Which components (some drip system for plant beds and sprinklers for lawn?) did you choose, how long were your pipes etc? 

[puntloos]

1 hour ago, Conor said:

Nothing to add to this except I'm considering the same. I've several long lengths of 16mm UFH PET pipe leftover that I was hoping to use. I'm wondering if you could use those barb fittings for hoses and drill small holes in the sections you want to water? 

Yeah currently I have no idea how hard or easy this all is. If you just punch holes in a pipe, does that mean the first holes get 80% of the water out, and the end of the pipe might drip once per year? Or are there pipes that indeed sprinkle each section evenly?

[S2D2]

1 hour ago, puntloos said:

Yeah currently I have no idea how hard or easy this all is. If you just punch holes in a pipe, does that mean the first holes get 80% of the water out, and the end of the pipe might drip once per year? Or are there pipes that indeed sprinkle each section evenly?

If the holes are too large this will be a problem, they need to be small enough to not cause a significant pressure drop which would affect the flow rate of everything downstream.

[Adam2]

Just installing "soaker hose" circuits connected to a manifold which runs off a v simple timer type unit. There is also a rain sensor that will skip the watering if it has sufficient rain.

 

Products I used are the hose and clips etc from site linked earlier and Claber controller from easygardenirrigation

 

seems OK - can add slightly bigger holes in key locations if needed but be v careful as a small hole still leaks a lot so think needle not anything bigger. The soaker hose I first got was really durable but same order 1 yr later the hose has a thinner wall thickness for same diameter

 

I used regular hose to connect from manifold to the soaker hose so it starts soaking where needed. For a large garden, may need to have separate circuits in different times to get the required water output which may mean a smarter control system or maybe 2 of the ones I mentioned but set to run at different times (they are cheap and run off batteries so easy install)

 

[Gone West]

5 hours ago, puntloos said:

Any chance you can provide me with a spec of what you bought? Which components (some drip system for plant beds and sprinklers for lawn?) did you choose, how long were your pipes etc? 

We have a hose pipe ban and can only use drippers. We bought two master units which have a filter and pressure reducer in them. We have two areas and one has around 100m of 13mm pipe which feeds two rows of new hedging, and a few newly planted shrubs with the 2 litre per hour drippers screwed directly into the 13mm pipe. The other area uses around 15m of 13mm pipe with 4.6mm pipe 'T'eed off to sixteen pots using a mixture of adjustable and 2l/h drippers.

[Alan Ambrose]

OK here's my longer response:

 

Firstly, the cheap stuff is very 'consumer-grade' - cheap and cheerful and it won't last long.

Second, there are various sizes of pipes which are close. They don't mix and match. Choose one from one of the main brands with matching fittings.

I wouldn't use 'micro-irrigation' (the little 4/6mm tube and baby sprinklers etc)  on anything but clay pots or, say, a roof terrace.

Putting the tubes and fittings together is a major faff, use a kettle of hot water, pliers, zip ties and two kinds of seal (say tape and gunge). 

 

Put a bunch of garden taps around on black MPDE 25mm pipe with decent fittings (Plasson etc), shut off and drain down valves, and a pressure reducer and non-reversible valve. That all works fairly well and is robust. If you're going to use consumer grade timers, provide extra 3/4" outlets for those and shutoff valves. You may still need extra pressure reducers for those - the ones generally available are hopeless and will fail. You'll need to remove the timers over winter otherwise they'll freeze up and burst. They'll fail anyway and you'll be lucky if they last for 2 years. Don't use this style, or anything which looks similar:

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aqualin-Outlet-Electronic-Garden-irrigation/dp/B01N6RJRZ2/ref=sr_1_30?crid=25E1QTCSQUX8P&keywords=water+timer&qid=1688402729&sprefix=water+timer%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-30

 

- I've had two fail on install and another fail since.

 

You'll still need to watch the timers - because they fail and because you'll want to adjust the times depending on the time of year. Otherwise you'll lose plants in the hot weather or get mould in the autumn. The fittings on the timers will probably leak anyway.

 

If you look at garden centres / south of France gardens etc, you'll see they do use 13/14mm drip line. The Americans also have proper motorised valves in sunken chambers and get contractors to blow the water out of the lines every wintertime.

[saveasteading]

I use timers. The good ones give a lot of timing options, and you can adjust the tap to a sensible flow.

I will only use hoselock or gardena now, but even they fail in time...too short a time, about 2 years on average. 

 

I have tried b and q own brand.....never again.  One had a digital display that was barely legible and failed in hot weather another had a metal part in the mechanical that rusted...duhhhh. as I keep telling myself....no own brands from kingfisher....however disguised as a brand.

 

I also have a fairly expensive drip system that would also power a soaker tube.  It is ever so clever as it is solar powered and pumps when the batteries reach a setting of my choice.    So it goes every half hour on a sunny day or not at all on a cloudy rainy day. It works off a barrel which fills from the greenhouse gutter, but lasts a week if no rain. Actually £60 is very good value for pump and tubes.

 

The only trouble is the tuoccasionally slly clog up with lime or algae, so some patience is required.

 

I wouldn't ever water the grass. It takes its chance.

 

Monty Don says he never waters flower beds.

[puntloos]

One final question - how does all this equipment work with freezing temperatures? Of course no need to irrigate during winter but I imagine these type of sprinkler/punctured hose type setups are all fairly surface-level. Is it OK for them to freeze with water in them? Or?

 

[Super_Paulie]

Could use a motorised valve connected to a leaky hose, but hardwired to a plug. Then the plug connected to something like a Tapo.

 

"hey Google, water the garden"

 

The tapo app lets you schedule timings etc. That's something I've been thinking of doing, but haven't looked at it in detail so far.

[puntloos]

Effectively digging the water line into the ground seems somewhat overkill vs just emptying out the water line.

https://www.easygardenirrigation.co.uk/blogs/news/winter-irrigation-guidelines#:~:text=Drain your Irrigation System,for allowing water to escape. seems to say an automatic drain valve might just suffice and then the water lines can be surface level?

[SteamyTea]

You can water when you like.

 

Why watering your plants at midday won't damage their leaves

It is a long-held idea that midday watering will scorch plants' foliage and damage their health – but this isn’t supported by the evidence, says James Wong

By James Wong

10 May 2023

 

 

rbkomar/Getty Images

AS A botanist, gardening has – unsurprisingly – fascinated me since I can remember. However, it isn’t only the mysteries of plants that I find so full of wonder, but also the colourful, and often puzzling, human behaviour we see in the world of horticulture.

Steeped in centuries of received wisdom, gardening’s many “rules” have been repeated so often they can seem like incontrovertible truths. This is despite scientific trials demonstrating that many have little basis in fact, so following them may be unnecessary at best and could give you inferior results at worst.

A classic example is the long-held idea that watering plants around noon on a sunny day should be avoided, since it might harm their leaves. The explanation is that tiny water droplets can act like lenses, focusing the sun’s rays onto sections of leaves just like a magnifying glass would, resulting in scorched foliage and reduced plant health.

This belief has even been cited by professional foresters as the cause of wildfires. Given the devastating impact these can have, it is pretty astonishing that the first scientific article on the topic wasn’t published until 2010.

Four researchers – most of whom were at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary – set out to learn more, running experiments on living plants and carrying out computer modelling. They found that spreading small glass spheres over the surface of smooth-leaved plants could indeed have this “magnifying glass” effect, causing damage right across the leaf surface. But when this was repeated with actual water droplets, such damage didn’t occur.

This is because water behaves rather differently to glass. Firstly, the shape of a water droplet on a leaf is more elliptical than spherical. The computer modelling showed that the maximum damage through a lens of this shape would occur when the sun was at a low angle in the sky, so in the morning or in the afternoon.

However, the sun’s intensity at these times is too low to cause any harm. Even if the intense light of the midday sun did somehow come at the most potent angle, the heat at this time of day would invariably cause the water droplets to evaporate before they had an effect.

The moral of the story? If your plants are in need of a good watering, give them some water. Not watering thirsty plants on a hot and sunny day for fear of leaf scorch will almost certainly lead to more damage from drought stress than could be caused by the magnifying glass effect. While it remains generally true that the ideal time to water a plant is in the morning or evening – to lessen the amount of water that evaporates before reaching the plant’s roots – the evidence doesn’t support the idea that watering at midday will cause burning.

[Gone West]

11 hours ago, puntloos said:

Is it OK for them to freeze with water in them? Or?

I just disconnect the hose from the tap and most of the water runs out. By the time it's cold enough to freeze I doubt there's much water left in the pipe to cause a problem.

[joe90]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

You can water when you like.

I would disagree, in these times of water wastage it makes sense to water in the evening so the water does  not evaporate as quickly as midday in sunshine and soak in to be absorbed by the plants. Like Monty Don I don’t believe in watering (unless using rain water). We need to change the flowers and plants etc we grow to match the climate we now have. IMO anyone with an irrigation system from the mains must be on a water meter.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, joe90 said:

I would disagree, in these times of water wastage it makes sense to water in the evening so the water does  not evaporate as quickly as midday

I agree with that from a water saving perspective, but as the article says, from the plants point of view, it make no difference.

It is probably of more importance to commercial horticulture, which is a bit of a environmental disaster in my opinion.

[joe90]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I agree with that from a water saving perspective,

Well no problem today, heavy rain overnight and a soggy day ahead. Rainwater butt  full and more planned .

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Well no problem today,

I have planted, in pots, succulents.  They seem to survive everything the weather throws at them.  Yesterday I covered them in sawdust while woodworking.

They will survive that as well.

 

[puntloos]

So what remains:

 

I have one underground water tank, that comes with a powerful pump. I think I could even reach the front (the farthest point is 40m away). I think ideally I want:
 

- a 'manual system' - aka a tap that can take a garden hose, both front and back.

- an automatic system - perhaps some leaky pipes or maybe even lawn sprinklers run on a semi-smart computer (timer, or perhaps something controlled by smart home)

 

So my 2 questions:

 

1/ (For both automated and manual) - Can I lay the pipes safely just under the surface, and avoid freezing by just draining the system every winter, or should I dig them to a safe level (1m deep? Either way much more costly)

2/ Should I Just run two irrigation loops and 2 direct pipes to tap, and power everything from a central pump at the water tank, or get the water to start of the loop first (one front, one back), and split there, perhaps with smaller sub-pumps eg this type - https://www.gardena.com/int/products/watering/pump/#products