- Drip Irrigation -
Design Overview

Whether you are installing a single line of drip tubing or a multi-zone system, a little planning is needed before you roll out the system. The Getting Started section in the menu is a good place to start planning your drip system. 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.

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

Patio or Deck Container Plants
With container plants, each container can be watered with a 1/4" branch line connected to 1/4" soaker dripline or with a dripper or mister at the end of the 1/4" line. We offer a Container Garden Kit that has everything 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. The soaker dripline can come directly off of your 1/2" mainline or 1/4" branch line tubing can come off the mainline and a 1/4" coupler can be used to connect the soaker dripline near the plant. A goof plug goes into the end of the soaker dripline loop to close off the line. The Heart Kit and either the Garden Beds add-on or the Trees & Shrubs add-on will get you started with this type of setup.

Garden Beds or Row Crops
Emitter tubing and T-Tape are good products to use when you need to water rows of plants. T-Tape can only be run in straight lines and is a thinner, shorter-lived product than emitter tubing. 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. Emitter tubing can be curved around your yard as needed to reach your plants. The Row Crop Kit will allow you to set up some T-Tape beds. The Heart Kit and the Trees & Shrubs add-on will get you started with emitter tubing with this type of setup.

Densely Planted Areas
Micro sprayers are good for watering ground cover, annual beds and other densely planted areas. Eindor mini-sprinklers are popular for this application. They can be mounted on 2' or 3' copper rods that do not stand out as much as plastic stakes might. Micro sprayers, such as the Super Net PC, can be used in orchards to water each tree. The Heart Kit and the Ground Cover add-on will get you started with Ein Dor mini-sprinklers with this type of plantings.