Drip Irrigation Design and Installation for Beginners

Your water source may be from a private well, untreated irrigation water or from a municipal water purveyor.  Knowing where your water comes from can influence the selection of valves and filtration devices.  

Soil texture (the % of sand, silt and clay) will determine the wetting pattern and infiltration rate of your irrigation water.  We'll look at how to determine what your soil texture is and what effects that will have on the wetting pattern of the drip system emitters.

 Different plants have different watering needs.  By grouping plants with similar irrigation requirements together your irrigation will be more effective and plants will be healthier as well.

Following up on Knowing Your Plants, Marc will talk about proper irrigation practices and how that starts with a good planting design.  Plants should be placed based on their watering requirements and then separated into hydro zones so that irrigation is efficient.  Low, medium and high water-use plants should be grouped together in low, medium and high water-use "zones".  The irrigation can then be "zoned" to match the flow and design capacity of your system.  In this lesson we'll look at how this is accomplished.  Note:  this is not a lesson on planting design.  

Being able to draw your design to scale - even roughly - will help you to layout your system and budget for materials.  In the previous lesson we learned how to group our plants into hydro-zones based on an existing planting plan.  In this lecture we'll look at how to draw up a simple plan and what we need to consider while doing this.

Once you have a design you're now able to make a parts list.  In this lesson we'll look at how to do this easily and effectively.

Now that we've covered the main points of designing your drip system we'll have a quick re-cap of what we've talked about in the previous 6 lessons.  In the Resources I've posted a chart giving direction on how long a run you can install based on the inlet pressure (PSI at the valve) and the emitter size (GPH flow rate).

In this lesson Marc will demonstrate how to assemble your drip manifold for both in-line and anti-siphon valve assemblies.

Marc will continue on demonstrating how to build your drip manifolds by showing how to install the drip filters and pressure regulators for both in-line and anti-siphon valves.

How to connect the parts, set the emitters at their proper location to the plant and what to do if you make a mistake.

Different from Point Source, Line Source requires being laid out in a grid pattern to irrigate the intended area.  We'll look at the basic theory behind this application and installation technique and the overall advantages of line source over point source.

In this lesson we'll look as some considerations for installing an in-line drip system on slopes. 

Converting a spray system to drip isn't difficult to do but filtration and pressure regulation are necessary elements to include.  This short lesson will discuss two ways to convert your sprinklers to drip.

While I touched on filtration in Lecture 5, in this Lecture Marc will go deeper into the importance of proper filtration, different meshes and why they may be needed and how to maintain your drip filter cartridges.

This lesson will focus on my own vegetable garden and the design and layout of the inline drip tubing I used for my tomatoes, beans, squash, etc.  We'll also be looking at my first-ever straw bale garden.  A diagram of the raised bed, showing he drip tubing design is available to download in Resources as a PDF.  Size is 8 1/2" x 11" and the scale is 1/4" = 1' 0".

Installing a drip irrigation system is one thing, and creating an irrigation schedule will help to manage your water more efficiently, but having a starting point for how many emitters you should install for each plant when you're using point-source (individual emitters) will give you even greater confidence for any of your designs or installations.  In this Bonus Lecture I'll provide you with a drip irrigation design and cover how I separate a landscape into hydrozones.  I'll also provide you with an Excel Spreadsheet you can use to create your own emitter schedules.  you can change the GPH flow rates and canopy diameter to fit your individual situation.  The spreadsheet will then give you your irrigated square footage and the precipitation rate.  With a little practice you'll be able to balance your GPH flows and precipitation rates for different sized plants making your drip system work even better for you!  This spreadsheet is formulated only for square feet - not square meters. 

Are you installing an Inline drip system?  If so, you'll want to know how to calculate your precipitation rates when using different emitter flow rates.  Check out and download the Resource for calculating both Imperial and Metric Precipitation Rates in the downloadable Materials for this lecture.  It is an excel file that you can fill in your emitter flow rate, emitter and line spacing and it will do the math for you.

Point Source (individual emitters) vs. Inline drip irrigation - is one better than the other?

In this bonus lecture I'll quickly cover the pros and cons of both applications. 

There is so much to learn and refine when using drip irrigation (and it can really become quite involved!) that I will be continuing to add bonus lectures that will help you to manage your irrigation much more efficiently if you choose to put in the time and effort.

Thanks for taking the time to watch and I'll see you again soon...

Rob

In this bonus lesson I will discuss the process for calculating maximum runs (lengths) of drip tubing for point-source drip irrigation.  Two critical factors are discussed - velocity and maximum pressure loss allowable.

Many thanks to the student who alerted us that this information was missing from the curriculum.

Be sure to download the Resouces I've made available to accompany this bonus lecture.

We've come to the end of this course and Mark and I hope you've enjoyed it and found value in what we've presented.  In Resources you'll find some information for continuing your education into drip irrigation design - some advanced ideas that we did not cover in the course but that you may find of interest.  Thanks so much for watching!