Drip system with temporary water hookup?

14 years ago

Hi,

I've searched a bit online but haven't managed to find much information about this.

I have a small yard, separated from my house by about 8 feet of concrete slab and a 4ft retaining wall. There is no water spigot in the garden itself, but there is one on the exterior wall of the house. The setup is such that it is quite difficult for me to extend the water supply to the garden itself.

Is is possible to set up a drip system in the garden, and hook it up to the water supply via a hose, which could be removed (and moved out of the way) whenever necessary?

Cheers,

Rory Molinari

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (3)

lehua49
14 years ago
Hi Rory,

Are you willing to cut out a narrow section of concrete walk at the spigot and tunnel under the footing of the wall, then pour back the cutout section of the walk to make a permanent spigot on the other side of the wall in the garden area? If not then drill a hole at the bottom of the wall and run hose through the wall hole across your sidewalk and make an additional spigot location in your garden area and attach it permanently to the garden-side wall. Then purchase a battery operated controller with vacuum breaker for the new spigot end and attach your drip system to the new controller/VB valve and good to go. It will be a fully automated system. HTH GL.
figboy
14 years ago
That's one option, but there are others. There are permanent solutions that involve you digging and getting dirty, muddy and probably wet. You also might not have to cut concrete, but you would have to fashion a jet lance with a 12 or 14' long piece of 1/2" piece of copper or galvanized pipe and a garden hose.

However, the easiest solution, which I think is what your are asking for, is to buy a book or two on drip irritation systems from ebay, Half-Price Books, Lowes or Home Depot. I bought two off of ebay and one from Half-price Books. The one I bought from Half-price books is by Ortho and is the one I used to put in a drip system around my house. It's a simple book and easy to read, follow and understand. There's one available on ebay right now as I type.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SPRINKLER-DRIP-IRRIGATION-WATER-GARDENING-ORTHO-2006_W0QQitemZ360048777945QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

It would be fairly simple once you figured out the types of drip heads or drip emmitters you needed to run the drip pipe. I dug a small, shallow trench for my 1/2" supply line and an even shallower trench for the 1/4" line from the supply line to each plant, or you could simply bury the lines under mulch.

There is a female hose connector that attaches to the 1/2" supply line, and you just screw your male hose in into it and turn the water on. However, your garden hose would be laid across the concrete, but you would only need to unroll enough hose to go up the retaining wall and connect to the 1/2" main drip line, that you might want to place at the top of the retaining wall close to the edge.

Right now our local Walmarts have their drip irrigation kits on sale. The kits include everything you need to set up a drip irrigation system, but no timer. You'd have to buy the timer separate. There is a manual time for about $10, and a battery powered one for about $20. These packages are cheap and probably not what you would find in a professional landscaping supply store, but they are easy to install and I haven't had a problem yet.

Walmart has 3 kits: one is for a small container garden, one is for a small regular garden, and a larger kit is for a medium sized yard. These kits include the filter, pressure reducer, connectors, dripline (1/2" and 1/4")and emmitters.

GOOD LUCK!!
Related Discussions
building drip irrigation system with a pump
Q
Comments (2)
Hi stephanieelaine, If you put the pump inside the bucket it must be submersible; if it is outside the bucket then centrifugal will do. A centrifugal pump can be mounted on the balcony itself & will easily draw the water up 10 feet from your tank. You can probably wire & monitor it better from the growing balcony as will be checking on plants there. You can run a centrifugal pump dry, but if the impeller is plastic it can eventually deform from the friction heat. If your water supply is an outdoor faucet near that proposed 5 gallon bucket placement site you can probably plumb it to a centrifugal pump sitting up on your balcony & wire the timer in to the pump. Submersibles are not meant to run dry for long stretches; sorry don't know particulars on your chosen brand. You usually use a check valve in the water tank that is connected to the feed pipe going into the pump; to keep from having to prime the pump every time go to use it. Put a screw on filter housing (so can clean inner screen out) somewhere before any water actually reaches the drip emitters to keep from clogging up. Use a pressure regulator at the outflow end of the pump. Match the regulator of the water pressure to the ratings of your drip emitters so you are not over powering their ability to release water from their holes. This is pretty simple sizing of the elements in a system, so don't be put off. I would say determine which pump can lift the water to the height you require & then work backward from the specifications of the total drip emitters you plan to use to size a pressure regulator. Emitters with built in diaphragms assure it that you will receive equal water outflow, irregardless of the planting height differentials. Put a removable end cap on the irrigation tube so can purge any algae that builds up inside, or it can block an emitter. If use an end cap that can be adjusted to bleed off some flowing water then it will let you release excess pressure if you find system design is flawed.
...See More
would love advice on a drip system plan - watering
Q
Comments (6)
Hi Nanzey, The system sounds great. There are dripper emitters that vary in amounts and even adjustable ones to match the amount of water to each plant. You can check how much water you are supplying to all the plants by measuring the water level drop in the 5-gal bucket and calculate the volume then convert it to gallons. You can measure the flow of the pump by volume divide by time the timer was on. Your emitter flow is measured in (Gal per hour). Your total emitter flow needs to be less than the total flow from your pump minus 10%. Aloha.
...See More
would love advice on a drip system plan - watering
Q
Comments (9)
I was using a combination of the soaker hoses and 1/4" drip that had small holes. I had hoped that the vacuum on top would draw air bubbles up. When I tried to put holes in the bottles, they drained way too fast. It worked a little better with a rigid bottle. But there were still problems with controlling flow. I also tried having just a normal bottle with a couple pinholes in the bottom and trying to control flow by loosening the cap. I either got no flow once the bottle collapsed, or emptying a 2 liter bottle in a couple hours, when I was aiming for a couple days. If I tried this again, I would try using one large container, then find a better way to put a hose into it, and use a water timer. Then have all the individual containers fed by a single source. Probably a lot closer to Nancey's. But I'm thinking self-watering containers will be my plan for the future. I'll have to drag tons of water to the balcony anyways, but not having to figure out watering evenly will help.
...See More
Sprinkler to Soaker Hose/Drip System
Q
Comments (6)
BTW I was looking for gardening advice and it appears my personal garden web has switched over to my pro page. I am responding as an amateur urban gardener only. Hope our personal experience can encourage you. I lived on the clay of the Canadian prairies and has a SSW facing side yard that could not grow grass (too hot in summer with reflection off stucco home) so I planted thyme and let it go. The bees came and set up lots of hives underground, so you know it was dry. Best friends a girl gardener could ever have. No gophers, no snakes, no pests. The Burr oak trees thrived. The foundation was just fine. The entire house was on a manual operation system but I had valves installed inside the house. Likely if you have clay without any ancient rock coming up you will be just fine. Go for it. Shut off the water between houses and see what happens. Just mark where you close off lines in case you need to restore the original system. When our house was newer we had some soil settling from the infill for excavation, but that was easily remedied by adding more and resloping. If you have heavy clay you could slope your side to create a simple gutter to drain front and back at the edge of your property line. Ensure your soil slopes away from the houses. You may want to add gravel for a walk way, which ants and trespassers do not like as much as paving blocks. If you are in a suburb with close neighbors you could work on a mutual beneficial no water zone with drainage to front and back. Hope this encourages you. In our new location we have arid steppe again but the soil is sandy and rocky as we sit on an ancient river system. I have done all the line and layout (the fun dirty digging work) but hired a professional to work at the irrigation diverter. I do a lot of math as a K&B designer and felt hiring a pro irrigation brain to calibrate and assemble the additional pressure controls was money well spent.
...See More
Beeone
14 years ago
I set up a similar system a couple years ago. I run 200 feet of garden hose, then connect it into 1/2 inch poly pipe which has 1/2 gph emitters in it to water some very small bushes. You can find the correct ends in the same area as the emitters and black poly in the store. Due to the low volume of the emitters, I turn the system on at night, then turn it off the next morning on a weekly basis. Will be moving to higher volume emitters and eventually getting ditchwater to the bushes.

Drip system with temporary water hookup?

Comments (3)

lehua49

figboy

Related Discussions

Beeone

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US