How To Install A Drip Irrigation System

| Sunday, August 11, 2013
By Andrea Davidson


There are many ways of watering plants and one of them is drip irrigation system in which water is made to drip directly into soil and roots of plant. With this kind of irrigation, the amount of water intake by plants is controlled. There is no scenario where plants receive little water or a lot of water. This method ensures plants take up what they only require.

Water from source is transmitted onto soil and roots through a series of valves, pipes, tubes and emitters. However, before setting up this structures, a person will first need to layout a suitable plan for irrigation. This plan has to bear in mind size of farm to be irrigated and the kind of vegetation that is planted.

Different plants require different water levels. Therefore an individual ought to set up different planting zones so as to make the irrigation process easier. Zones allow a person to set a timer to offer water to different planting zones according to their requirement. Some examples of zones may include; food gardens, front lawns, trees, rear lawns, containers, shrubs among other sectors. From these examples, it is clear that the different sectors require watering daily or even once a week.

After determining the various sectors, an individual then decides on the location of irrigation controllers will be located. It is usually advisable to have automatic valves with this drip watering method and these valves are usually controlled by the irrigation controllers. These gadgets can be stored inside the house or outside connected with control wires which run from controller location to the valves.

After the main line has been set up installation of the lateral lines then follows. Lateral lines consist of small tubes running from main line to the planting zones. Once this is done, the emitters are then installed and they transmit water in gph. One should ensure that vegetation in same sector get amount of water in gph.

Once all the connections have been made and cross checked to be alright, an individual can now turn on the water. The person can use clamps to attach the lines onto the ground. Among the many benefits of this technique is the obvious fact that it reduces loss of nutrients and fertilizer that would otherwise be seen when watering other ways. The other benefits include low cost of labor, decreased soil erosion among other advantages.

No man made structure is perfect and this process is not spared. A lot of people always complain of the high initial cost of setting up this structure, rodents in pipes, clogged pipes and tubes due to poor filtration and many other unique problems. But to avoid this, an individual must always ensure proper maintenance with constant checking of the functional units.

Therefore proper installation of drip irrigation system will make sure an individual gets value for money. One has to make sure that all of the mentioned components are available. For those people wondering what kind of crops can be grown using this method the answer is numerous plants. Example can be flowers, cereals, vegetables, nuts, spices and even shrubs.




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