Advanced Drip Irrigation - Field Installations
What you'll learn
- At the end of this course you'll have a greater understanding of how to lay out and install in-line drip irrigation systems.
- You will learn how to use inline drip irrigation for ornamental shrub beds
- You will learn how to use inline drip irrigation for vegetable gardens
- You will learn how to use inline drip irrigation for fruit trees
- You will learn how to calculate how much water your shrubs, garden or fruit trees actually require to stay healthy and thrive
Requirements
- You should have a basic understanding of drip irrigation materials and components prior to taking this course. There are no other tools or materials required. There will be extensive resources available throughout the class for you to download, including the irrigation plan used for this property.
Description
This class is for those of you who want to learn, not just installation techniques, but how to actually calculate the amount of water your landscape requires for better water management. This is not a beginners course on drip irrigation. If you're decent with math and have a desire to be a better water manager then this course should be a good fit for you.
This was filmed both out of doors at a private residence in Martinez, California - near the San Francisco Bay and in my studio in Auburn, California. It documents the installation of in-line drip irrigation under real-world situations; all of the participants work in the landscape and irrigation industry. Explanations and installation tips are offered and discussed throughout this course, each "actor" having the opportunity to describe what they are doing and why. We'll be discussing drip irrigation for established plantings, vegetable beds, fruit trees, ornamental beds and native plants on a hillside. Due to the location there will be times when leaf blowers, a jack hammer and passenger jets flying overhead will be heard. I have done my best to mitigate these distractions and I don't feel they take anything away from the course, but I want you to be aware of them from the start. Lecture 20 is a Bonus Lecture added in August 2021 - it is a tour of my own vegetable garden showing how I laid out and installed drip irrigation for raised beds. A scaled diagram of hte garden and drip system is available for download in the Resources area for this Lecture.
The "in studio" lectures is where I'll be covering water management issues such as using reference evapotranspiration rates to help determine your irrigation run times. We'll look at the formula for how to calculate the gallons of water your landscape needs. The values I will be using are for Placer County, California, USA. The formulas will work wherever you may be living, but you'll have to do some research on your own to find the critical evapotranspiration rate values for your location. Universities, agricultural stations, farm advisers and local weather stations are all resources you can reach out to to get this information.
There will be some math included - techniques and formulas for determining how much water your various plants will require to be healthy without over-watering and wasting this resource. Exercises and resources will be available for download and the irrigation plan for this project will also be available for you to download and refer to for your own projects.
The purpose of this course is to offer real-world solutions and insights into how drip irrigation can and should be designed and installed - whether you're a homeowner or a landscape contractor/designer. If you're really interested in learning how to design and manage an effective drip irrigation system for your home or for a client, then I believe this course will be perfect for you.
Who this course is for:
- This course is for those already familiar with drip irrigation. We'll be working with in-line systems and demonstrating how to lay out and install irrigation in an actual yard. If you are interested in seeing and learning about the real-world challenges of designing and installing in-line drip systems, then this course is for you!
Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 783 Reviews
- 24,353 Students
- 12 Courses
Robert Littlepage, as his many former students can attest, is a dynamic instructor who brings real-world experience and a touch of humor to his teaching style. His love of teaching and enthusiasm for his topic is a source of inspiration to his students. Mr. Littlepage founded the California School of Garden Design in 1998 to fill a much-needed void. He discovered that other than two-year junior college programs and a few correspondence courses, there was no place in the United States where someone interested in becoming a garden designer could learn these skills quickly and at minimum expense. Rob created the School to provide an opportunity for those individuals to learn necessary skills and to become proficient in Garden Design in a short but intensive period of time. This has lead to his now offering on-line classes through Udemy.
Rob began his career as a forester and a licensed landscape contractor and has had his own design practice for over 34 years, creating gardens for clients throughout California and the surrounding states. His designs have been featured in garden design books and won awards at numerous shows. He studied garden design in England in 1994. Rob previously taught landscape and irrigation design at Sierra College in Rocklin, California and at the Placer Adult School in Auburn, but decided to open his own garden design school. Landscape designer David Stevens, of David Stevens International has collaborated with Rob to present design classes in the United States and wrote the forward to Rob's latest book "Fundamentals of Garden Design" which is a complement to his course on landscape design.
He is a licensed landscape architect in California (#5674) and Louisiana (L-249 - retired). He is a Qualified Water Efficient Landscaper (QWEL) an EPA WaterSense Partner and is a certified landscape irrigation auditor.