Hi GTN, Very good question. I'll bet your 3/4" spigot has a 1/2" copper line feeding it nor is a spigot 3/4" through out it's length. Smaller to bigger or vice versa doesn't matter. Size affects velocity at that change point, but very briefly. Length of pipe is what affects the system efficiency (loss of pressure) the most. Water flows faster through the smaller diameter pipe and when water velocity gets high enough turbulence in the pipe is reached and your friction loss per foot of pipe increases as well as noise. This friction loss robs you of pressure as the water travel along the system. Your system has high pressure so this not a big concern in your system. It becomes a design issue depending on where you reduce your pressure for your garden. 1 1/4" pipe was sized by a formula that calculates flow versus velocities in various size pipe. A standard design criteria for non-turbulent flow is less than 5 feet per second velocity(noise reduction). Using that criteria the 1 1/4" was acceptable, 3/4" would be less acceptable but still can be utilized with no real problems. It then becomes a cost issue. It makes no difference what size the source pipe is, but hooking up to your house affects the velocity of water traveling through your house pipes. If you turn on your hose, how noisy is the flow in your house? Does it affect the flow of other water using appliances being used at the same time? Turn on the washer, shower, kitchen faucet, etc an listen to the sounds of the water. If the answer is no to these questions your house water system doesn't pose a constriction to your garden water needs. The more items being run the noisier it gets. Did you ever call your builder and find out about the pressure regulator needed for your house water system? Just curious. GL. Aloha

He said it thats all there is to it,from there you could figure out how much an hour your spending if you wanted to. I just turned on one of our customers. 16 zones about 3-5 heads a zone. his water bill was 1200 or 1600 not positive what he said.and he thought it was higher than usual.he had 12 heads that were leaking around the collar so that didnt help his bill to much. You could always get a well somwhere down the line. i spent 100 hours putting one in last year, by hand, in my yard. After i found the water though. i could now bang the well head,hook up the pump,and have it hooked up to my sprinklers in 2 hours. 13 ft down i have plenty of water.its possible to do this yourself,im a service tech,but dont do anything with wells besides prime them for the homeowner.

Thanks Mike, the amount of time you and tigerdunes spend helping people on this site is amazing and very appreciated. This was the 4th quote we've gotten. (not including a 5th contractor that never returned our calls) I've thrown out a Lenox dealer who didn't spend much time in the house and basically quoted an exact replacement for our old system. I also threw out another trane dealer who has a good reputation in the area, but was pushing very hard for high end systems and priced the items we really wanted thousands more than other 3 quotes. That leaves me with the 2 mentioned. Perhaps I need to get one more, but we felt very comfortable talking with the carrier dealer. We also let him know that we did not need top of the line on efficiency or features and would be frustrated if he quoted us as such. We wanted something that made sense if we planned to be in the house for less than 10 more years. Perhaps this contributed to the lower end furnace upstairs. Carrier seems to quote in a good, better, best format. He initially recommended going with the "better" option of lower SEER A/C and "comfort"level furnaces (similar specs up and down) for a couple thousand less, but since we aren't really sure about moving, I wanted to step it up a bit. The other wrinkle is that the carrier dealer has a sister company that does moisture and mold remediation. You may remember a post I made a while ago about my crawlspace & ductwork being a mess and a trunk line running up the inside of a large chimney to allow the single system to reach the attic. We've decided to do things right by switching to two systems and the carrier dealer was able to speak most intelligently about the situation. The sister company has been the best to work with for crawlspace remediation quotes, offers the longest warranty (25 yrs) and they've collectively agreed to negotiate a TBD additional discount if we go with both companies in a sort of package deal. I've asked the carrier dealer to come back with a hybrid quote that includes all "performance" level equipment with high efficiency furnaces on both floors, but keeping the system at 14 SEER instead of 15.5. Still waiting on that and will let you know when I get it. Given the information above, do you still think we need to walk away and find another contractor? Finally, Tigerdunes asked about living space split in an earlier post. There is about 1,740 down and 1,300 up. There is a large opening at the front of the house for stairs and an overlook to the foyer. 6 rooms downstairs (incl 1 half-bath) & 6 rooms up (including 2 full bath).

I would say you get what you pay for. I ordered drip depot kits recently and it is definitely of inferior quality. Last year I ordered two from Dripworks and they had Netafim Soaker dripline( which is best in class), while DripDepot one has Jain Soaker dripline. Jain tubing is very stiff. You cannot swish the tubing at all between your fingers. It is also very slick, which makes its slippery to hold on to. I cannot properly place a transfer in the end of the tubing due to how stiff and slippery it is.