Whether you are installing a single line of drip tubing or a multi-zone system, a little design planning is needed before you roll out the drip irrigation system. The Tutorial section in the menu is a good place to start a drip irrigation design. The first step is to sketch out a drawing of your garden. Make a copy or two before you begin marking it up with your drip system. If all the plants have roughly the same watering requirements and your garden is small, a single zone can handle your entire drip system. Otherwise you'll need at least one zone per hydro-zone. If you feel that designing a drip irrigation system is too overwhelming, you can always submit a request for DripWorks to design your system for you on our Design Form submission page.

Let's start by looking at some common drip irrigation situations.


Patio or Deck Container Plants
With container plants, each container can be watered with either 1/4" soaker dripline or with a dripper or mister inside the container. To start, lay out your 1/2" mainline tubing and punch a hole in the tubing at the location of your first container. Take a transfer barb and attach one end to your blank 1/4" tubing. Then insert the other end of the transfer barb into the hole of the mainline tubing that you just punched. The 1/4" tubing carries the water into your container where it will be released through a dripper or with the 1/4" soaker dripline. If you use the dripline be sure to close the end of it with a goof plug. Repeat this process for each of your containers. We offer a Container Garden Kit that has all the drip irrigation supplies you need for watering up to 20 containers.





Landscape with Individual Plants
Another application for 1/4" soaker dripline is looping around individual plants in your landscape. Punch a hole in the 1/2" mainline tubing, put a transfer barb onto the 1/4" soaker dripline and then insert the other side of the transfer barb into the hole in the mainline tubing. Loop the dripline around the individual plant and close the dripline with a goof plug. If the plant is some distance from the mainline, insert blank 1/4" tubing with a transfer barb into the hole you punched in the 1/2" mainline. This 1/4" branch line can be run out to the location of the desired plant and connected to the soaker dripline with another transfer barb. The Heart Kit combined with the Garden Beds add-on kit will get you started with drip irrigation for this type of setup.




Home Gardens and Raised Beds
When planning to use drip irrigation in your garden beds, the most common method is to use 1/4" Soaker Dripline or T-Tape. If your beds are 15' or less then it is more economical to use soaker dripline due to the lower cost of 1/4" fittings and longer life of the product. Run 1/2" mainline tubing along the side of the bed to create a "header." Punch a hole in your tubing and insert your soaker dripline in the 1/2' tubing with a transfer barb. Run your soaker dripline the length of the bed and close the piece with a goof plug. The Heart Kit combined with the Garden Beds add-on kit will give you all the essentials for using soaker dripline in your beds. For longer beds you can use T-Tape in a similar manner by creating a header and running T-Tape the length of the bed. Tape Loc fittings are used to connect the T-Tape to the mainline tubing. Row Crop Kit is a complete system that includes 200 feet of T-Tape for this type of application.





Densely Planted Areas
Micro sprayers are good for watering ground cover, annual beds and other densely planted areas. Ein Dor mini-sprinklers are popular for this application of drip irrigation. The most common way to install these is to place them on the top of an Ein Dor support kit, which is a length of 1/4" tubing attached to a copper rod. The 1/4" tubing is then inserted into your mainline tubing with the transfer barb that is part of the support kit. The copper rods blend more harmoniously into your garden than do plastic stakes. The Heart Kit and the Ground Cover add-on kit will get you started with Ein Dor mini-sprinklers for your densely planted areas.







Drip Irrigation for Row Crops
Emitter tubing and T-Tape are good drip irrigation products to use when watering rows of plants. T-Tape can only be run in straight lines and is a thinner, shorter-lived product than emitter tubing. Tape Loc Fittings are used to connect your T-Tape to the mainline tubing. With T-Tape you should always use a 200 mesh filter to prevent sediment from clogging it up. Also remember to use a pressure regulator since 10 PSI is the maximum pressure for most of the T-Tape we carry. The Row Crop Kit has all the necessary components to set up ten 20 foot rows of T-Tape. Emitter tubing is just like 1/2" mainline tubing, but with emitters built into the tubing at regular intervals such as 9", 12", 18" and more. It uses the same fittings as the 1/2" mainline tubing with the most popular being the Easy Loc Fittings. The Heart Kit combined with the Trees & Shrubs add-on kit will get you started with emitter tubing for plants in rows.