Rstarr, You have a good grasp of what you need so I can tell you have done some research before posting. Just some suggestions. Place a vacuum breaker on your hose bibs before anything else. It is required by most water municipalities and protects yours and others water from contamination. Place a water pressure gauge on the hose bib and read your house pressure. Measure your flow rate by timing how long a 5-gallon bucket takes to fill(gallons per minute or gpm) Your emitters are rated in gpm or gph. you will know how many emitters you can handle for your flow rate. I don't know your hardscape situation without a picture but I would use a Y after the VB and run a 1/2" pvc underground with a hose bib fitting at the end to your garden plot and go from there. Small pipes lose more pressure along its length and experience higher water velocity for the same pressure and make more noise. 3/4" pipe is even better to the garden. Garden hoses will leak or burst over time as a supply line if kept pressurized. They tend to burst when you go on vacation and flood your neighbors for days. Let us know what your pressure and flow rate are. Aloha

Do you like the Mister Landscaper products & does anyone else have any longterm experience w/ this sort of layout? I purchased the starter kit (50 ft. of tubing, asstd. stakes & drippers, the patio & potted plant kit, & the timer)-I'm going to try & set it up this weekend. I think a system like this might just as efficient or more, as the soaker hoses I currently have in the perimeter beds around the house. I'll move my soaker hoses to the outer edges, & water that way, instead of the intermittent sprinkler water they get now... My yard is a typical suburban rectangle, 103' x 167', just under 1/2 acre, lots of mature trees, so pretty heavily shaded. I value my few sunny spots & try to cram as much in there as I can, & I think if could get a handle on the watering, I could cram in even more plants!

Your current sprinkler system may or may not have an inline filter and pressure regulator. If not, you should be sure to install these as part of your conversion to drip. A 150 mesh filter and a 15 to 25 psi pressure regulator are recommended for drip systems. You can buy each component individually or as a filter/pressure regulator combination unit. Your conversion kit should include these components

lafutura, you have piqued my curiosity as to why you would want to install a perimeter drip line on a lawn that is already watered by a system. I would think that installing a gate valve or similar ahead of the drip zone would allow you to regulate the water flow into the new drip line. Concerning the other question, there ought to be a manifold on the premises. Either all the piping to the zones start out at a central location and are routed their separate ways or else all the valves (and piping) are in a central location. Another possibility is that a main 'hot line' was run from the water source and the zone lines (and valves) were tapped from it. A radical approach would be to disconnect the wire from the unidentified terminals (one at a time) at the clock and observe which area wilts. This is recommended only if you can critically observe your whole landscape daily. You want to spot the earliest symptom of wilt to avoid serious damage to you landscape.