How to install irrigation system? Soaker hose vs weeper hose and pop up sprinklers?

[flummoxed01]

 

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for advice on installing an irrigation system. I’m not planning anything too fancy, but I had an idea to use soaker hoses and water the garden beds manually with a hose. However, the other half of my brain is suggesting installing a proper drip system for the garden beds with pop-up sprinklers for the grass. I’ve attached a rough sketch to give you an idea.

My plan is to connect the main water pipe from the outside tap to the drip lines on the either side of the fence gate in the flower beds. Then, I’ll install sprinklers in the lawn. The water pressure is quite high, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m hoping you can share your thoughts and suggestions on what options are available. I’m also curious if I can distribute one mainline to both the drip lines and sprinklers.

Thanks a bunch! 

[JacobZ]

Hi @flummoxed01,

Thank you for your question about setting up an irrigation system in your yard and thank you for the sketch.

If you have any photos of the yard itself, this would also be handy as it will give our members a better idea of where things are and where things would be installed.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with using soaker hoses and manual watering for your yard, it is a big time save to be able to simply turn the tap on and have everything watered without too much effort on your behalf. 

Looking at the length of the irrigation lines, it's likely, based on pressure limitations, that you'd need to run two or three separate lines. You can use a multi-outlet tap such as this Holman QuikDial 4x Outlet Tap Timer to run your separate lines.

In residential applications, 13mm or 19mm poly pipes are common and easy to use with a huge variety of associated accessories. Depending on the width of your garden beds, you may be able to just run this Pope 13mm x 100m Drip Eze Drip Irrigation Tube the full way around the perimeter of the space.

For your pop-up sprinklers, there are a variety of options, with pressure being a more important consideration. Have a look at How to install a lawn irrigation system attached to recycled water where @TimGeo has been planning a similar system. He is using the Rain Bird Sprinklers with different heads for different areas. Using the Rain Bird brand as an example, it's important to check against the U-Series spray nozzle performance charts to ensure you'll have the required pressure to operate the system.

You might also like to check out How To Plan An Irrigation System and How To Install An Irrigation System.

Allow me to tag @Dave-1, @Noelle and @Nailbag to see if they have any advice they can add.

I certainly think it will be worthwhile to set up an irrigation system so you can just turn the tap on, and everything gets watered and I'm excited to help you with the project.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Jacob

[Dave-1]

Good Morning @flummoxed01 

I havnt laid a water system down, I intend to but half the bits are still in the box

Looking at your rough sketch I do have a concern about the length of runs. One is 40m and the other 20odd meters. I am not sure how well the watering heads / driplines will work at that length. Maybe break it up so the 40m run has two runs, one for the closer things and then a long run with nothing on it to supply the further away sprinkler heads?

The only thing I would make sure of is the water is delivered low for the garden beds, to make sure the leaves dont get wet type deal. I water my tomatoes and pumpkin with the hose held at grown level and walk around as I noted I was doing more damage to the whole plant by spraying them.

Dave

[Nailbag]

Hi @flummoxed01 

My preference are soaker hoses over weep. Using solid pipe in areas where there are no plants to waste water on. Running a system that covers both sides of the plants for more even distribution of watering to the roots.

Nailbag