IRRIGATION ABCs for SUCCESSFUL DIY INSTALL | PART 2

This week’s episode is Part 2 of 2: Get the ABCs of Drip Irrigation, shifting out into the Planting Beds today.

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00:00 WELCOME BACK
01:06 Wrapping up Pop Ups
04:23 The Gold Standard: Drip Irrigation
05:30 Benefits of Drip Irrigation
05:52 More Benefits
07:09 Approach to Drip Irrigation Vs Spray
08:06 PRO TIP
09:19 Remote or Takeoff from Valve Assembly
10:11 Filtration
11:25 Drip Irrigation Parts
12:41 Efficiency
13:41 Environmental Factors for Spray or Drip Irrigation
17:13 Timers
19:53 Terminology

Hey guys coach here welcome to this week’s uh program this week is going to be part two of DIY irrigation install last week we talked about a lot of lawn based irrigation application and installation this week we are shifting gears and going away from the lawn and

Out into the planting beds that need to be watered at various locations around the world now there’s a couple of ways that you can approach planner bit we are going to talk about the the old standard uh popup spray heads which are really getting kind of antiquated as far

As uh efficiency especially depending on what plants are used the standard 4-in popup spray after a mature Foundation bed or planting beds is generally spraying right into a particular shrub and not penetrating the whole bed behind it the gold standard now is d RP irrigation and that’s going to be a bulk

Of this week’s topic but let’s wrap up as far as popup spray heads in planter beds the most efficient way that I have seen the approach on these things and that I have installed many many times is to make sure you have very low plant material in the front of the beds that

Are going to be irrigated I used to use 6in minimum popup heads sometimes times even 12in popup heads in order to properly irrigate a planting bed do I think it’s the most efficient way of doing it no I don’t are they still out there absolutely they are if you have

Plants that are mixed with ground covers and stuff like that uh your your popup spray system still does an adequate job it does uh the other thing I would caution you on though is if you’re in a place that has really hard water a lot of calcium carbonate in your water um

You will find as you water month after month year after year your plant material will start getting covered in it and you’ll get that that crusty whitish gray look on the leaf material so pop-up spray heads and that kind of a system in a planting bed is approached

The same way as your lawn system you’re going to go out and you’re going to flag the planting bed you can have spray heads that are in the back of the bed shooting forward and in the front of the bed shooting backwards so that you have an overlap of coverage there’s that term

Again overlap and a much more consistent watering system rather than just everything goes right at the front of the bed you’re going to space them out with flags just like you did your lawn area you’re going to determine based on the number of flags that you’ve put in

This bed how many valves are going to be needed to service this planter bed and the rest of the foundation beds whatever you’re going to have and then you’re going to do your install just like you did in your lawn area and then you’re going to bury everything you’re going to

Compact it down you’re going to test it and then go ahead and complete your planting or if you’re doing an existing lawn repair the plants the roots and everything else tuck it down in there in the trench and then REM mulch or do whatever you’re going to do to make it

Look nice again so I’m glazing over that only because there’s not a lot of difference it’s just what you’re watering and how tall that you’re shooting the water into your planting beds the other way that I’ll leave you with on this part of it is U often times

People use those gray schedule 0 risers up out of the ground and then you have just a spray shrub head on the top and then you can adjust the elevation of these spray heads to whatever you need to shoot over or in in the planting bed um the biggest problem with those is

They generally tend to break dogs hit them kids hit them um even when you’re raking stuff out in the fall uh when you’re mulching with wheelbarrows sometimes that schedule 80 after a few years gets kind of brittle but it does it’s easily replaced it’s easily extracted and repaired so that’s just

One more option okay so let’s talk about the kind of the gold standard in this day and age as far as watering planter beds planter beds that have ground covers shrubs trees color perennials all that kind of stuff that’s the drip irrigation in this day and age why because everybody is so water

Conservation conscious and efficiency conscious it works so much better to put a small amount of water right at the root base of a plant and allow it to drip over the course course of several minutes if not hours rather than spray into the air and have probably 70% evaporation take place

You’re putting the water right where it needs to be and not out into the atmosphere so nowadays I can’t think I can’t think of the last spray shrub bed system probably 20 years maybe 15 years since I did that everything else has been drip irrigated and drip irrigation the the efficiency quotient

That comes along with that and the water cost savings that comes along with that and the cost comparison that comes along with that it’s almost a duh moment you just kind of need to go with drip irrigation it’s the way to go so what are some of the

Precautions that you have to use when you get into drip irrigation you can still have them on the same valve assembly you can still have them uh come on at the same time if necessary uh but often times really efficient watering kind of cuts down on the amount of days of the

Week that you actually need to water you know cities municipalities counties all the regulatory authorities that govern our city-based water systems they love drip irrigators because you’re not wasting a lot of water as a matter of fact there’s actually rules in place in some jurisdictions where if you have

Nothing but you know drip irrigation and you have no lawn then you’re good to go whenever you need to do it they generally don’t hinder people that drip irrigate rather than spray irrigate and you can always tell usually drip irrigated Landscapes don’t have Lawns and you can never tell really when

They’re being watered on one exception maybe you have some micro sprays on staks that are watering a particular color bed or a small area of ground cover or something and that’s really that’s the best way people know that hey The Smiths are watering again drip irrigation is approached in a slightly

Different manner than spray irrigation uh compared to your lawn and that kind of stuff PSI although very favorable in your Spray Systems becomes almost a detriment when it comes to your uh drip irrigation we don’t want High pressures it’s just going to blow parts and pieces

Uh all over the place and cause a lot of damage we use devices in in those drip irrigation systems that bring the water pressure down and when I’m saying down maybe at the top 30 PSI most of the time 25 psi is all you need the Plumbing Systems the plumbing systems that go

Along with this are usually always a flexible polyethylene pipe and if you’re installing your own system and it’s still cold out or it’s getting cold out strongly urge you to get your rolls of your polyethylene drip tubing home a few days in advance have some help and

Uncoil them and let them relax out in the sunshine I used to put them along fence lines and up on the tops of the top rail of a fence line and I’d tack them down and I’d run a few hundred feet of those back and forth and just let

Them sit there for a couple of days then when you go to install them remember most of them are going to be either on the surface or just slightly below the surface of the ground now there’s a couple different kinds of drip irrigation there’s the emitter type of

Drip irrigation where you have a supply line then you have an emitter line and then you have the emitters the emitters the actual water delivering device that’s putting water out of the system and onto the ground next to the plant the flexible quarin tubing that goes on

The emitter connects to your supply line your supply line is what goes back to your valve assembly and their connection points can be done in a couple of ways you can do a remote location which I did quite a bit uh if I put in a valve

Assembly and I had a PVC system and two of the valves vales that were dedicated in that valve assembly were going to be for planter beds I would use the same trench as I did for the lawn and run them out to the fence line or run them

Over to a foundation bed and I would stub them up right at ground level with a drip tubing adapter inserted in the elbow at the top and then I would just tape that off and do my other stuff until I was ready to finish with my drip

Tubing and then I would take the tape off put the drip tubing in and then irrigate the beds that’s called Remote application you can also do it from the valve assembly itself and take it off right from there but you’re just using more polyethylene pipe instead of PVC

Pipe the other thing about drip systems that you generally don’t have to worry so much about uh Spray Systems and that is filtration filtration is very very important and there are devices that come along in modern-day drip irrigation systems that have both the pressure reducer and the filter all in one piece

They kind of look like this right here so if you’re doing a drip system maybe you have a maybe you have four valves that are serving your lawn and you have a couple of valves that are serving your foundation around the front of your house and your planter beds out

In the front yard you can put on the antiphon valve you can put that pressure reducer filter device right on the downstream part of your valve or if you’re doing remote you can put that device right in a valve box right with your your elbowed PVC pipe you can

Put it right on there and then run your polyethylene pipe from that point on in the remote application so what are the differences again we’re talking about less PSI and we are talking about filtration for a successful drip irrigation system now the parts and pieces that go along with

This is basically they’re just a little different than spray we talked about the supply line and the supply line is the larger half inch maybe 3/4 inch polyethylene pipe and that’s supplying the water throughout the bed to the end point then we’re going to poke holes in

That supply line along its route and then put in various quarter inch tubing couplers and then putting the emitter right at the the base of your new plant maybe on a little emitter stake so it’s up above out of the ground it doesn’t get clogged and then we’re talking about

Staking the supply line down to the ground again you can leave it right on the surface and mulch over it with whatever mulch you choose to use or gravel whatever you choose to use or you can kind of do just a just a real mild 1

Inch maybe 2 in deep little trench and put your supply line in that and stake it down and then cover it back over just kind of protects it a little bit from uh weather uh stepping on it uh rodents that like to chew on water stuff and

Plastic stuff just kind of protects it a little bit drip irrigation is a way of taking kind of an inefficient way of watering and making it very efficient we’re talking about the amount of water uh used in an hour now rather than in a minute and your emitters are going to

Come in very ious sizes you’re going to have 1 2 3 four gallons per hour per emitter so you don’t have to do a lot of math now uh a single half inch supply line in the normal backyard is going to be able to supply a whole fence line

Absolutely a whole fence line and you’ll not see any difference between the first emitter and the last emitter because we’re using uh a microsc opic amount of water compared to a spray head 90% savings for you in places that have high water bills this is where you really

Want to get good get good at it and understand it okay so that basically covers drip irrigation and how it compares to spray irrigation let’s talk about some environmental factors that come to bear on both types of systems environmental factors will tend to uh make us think about when we’re going to

Water and how we’re going to water and do we need to know prevailing winds and that kind of stuff what type of devices we’re actually deliver the water with maybe you’re going to need more Force so maybe you might need bigger heads and in that case do we need bigger pipe so no

Environmental factors start off with are you in a real Aid area places that uh depending on your plant choices you’re going to need to water more often uh maybe you’re in a real humid area and humid areas tend to have a lot of rain so maybe you don’t need to water quite

As often I talked about windy areas there’s places down in the southwest part of our country that we have traveled through that during the springtime it’s like a a gale a gale forced winds almost 24 hours a day in the springtime trying to water with

Spray heads down there it it it has to be done in the middle of the night when the wind is at its very very least otherwise you’re just wasting water you’re not getting water uh onto the plant and certainly into the ground in a sufficient amount so there’s where plant

Choices and other things come into play and we environmental factors doesn’t that sound custommade for drip irrigation so you’re not broadcasting this water out into a windy Aid envir environment the other thing you need to know about even before you start designing out your system is what kind

Of soils you got do you have real Sandy highly porous type of soil where water is going to go on there and it’s going to go through that porous soil rather quickly may have to bump up a few minutes there to make sure that your lawn and your plants get the right

Amount of water or do you have a heavy clay soil if you throw a uh a half inch of water on your clay lawn in a matter of minutes it’s just running off and maybe you need to back that water minutes back and water slightly more frequently so that the water hits and

Sinks in hits and sinks in and you get a much more efficient watering for your plants and Lawn the other thing is is what about your plant and Lawn varieties themselves when you make your plant selection know your USDA zones or wherever you live and know what plants

Really work best together as well as what goes with the the lawn as well there are drought tolerant Lawns out there dwarf fescue Lawns and buffalo grass Lawns and some of the Bermuda Lawns these guys can tolerate a few days depending on the temperatures and the soils and everything else a few days

Where you don’t have to water them you have to water them every day you shouldn’t have to water any landscape in a residential setting every single day uh if you do you’re just going to create a very very shallow root system that dries out in a hurry as soon as you turn

You know turn that spet off or you have a problem with a a timer or something and then lastly as far as environmental factors is how much sun versus how much shade are the area that you’re irrigating and that will determine when you’re going to water how much you’re

Going to water and what kind of plants you’re putting in there okay lastly we’re going to talk about timers in this day and age in 2024 I do not see why anybody would have a manual irrigation system I I just don’t unless you’re doing a big AG ultural type of job residential

Landscape irrigation it just should be irrigated with automatic timer and why because it allows the flexibility of being able to turn on and turn off at just the precise times where your best water penetration and usage can be you can time it so that your sprinkler system comes on if you’re pressure

Challenged it’s not coming on during when showers and dishwashers and clothes washers are going and robbing more PSI for the house rather than for the irrigation system the timer can do that for you you can also do it as far as segregating various programs so your

Lawn gets maybe three days a week but your planner beds on that really efficient drip system only gets a a day a week maybe two days a week and on your third drip system maybe it does your mini Orchard or your veget able garden and it’s on a whole another program

Takes a little bit of reading the manual but man if you have a a three program system you can have various parts and pieces of your greencape watered just right and why wouldn’t you do that for uh an investment of a hundred bucks and maybe some more dollars for wire to run

Out to your valves it saves you money in the long run it saves water for sure and the efficiency quotient goes way way up so I’m a big proponent of timers and nowadays you can do it to where they can connect Bluetooth right to your phone if

You are you’re on vacation somewhere and you suddenly see that back home you got a heat wave that’s starting tomorrow morning you can WiFi your timer right at your house to bump it up a couple of minutes so that it makes sure that your water gets done correctly you can also

Have rain sensing devices put out there uh on the system so that if it starts to rain on your Wednesday watering day all of a sudden you’re getting a half inch of rain it’ll shut the system down if you’re doing it manually you can’t do that plain and simple so go with

Technology when it comes to irrigation and make sure you put in a timer all right hey that’s what I have what I’m going to leave you with is just a little bit of nomenclature when it comes to this stuff when it especially for drip systems it only take about a minute of

Your time okay remember I talked about supply line supply line is the black polyethylene pipe that is going to be laid on the surface and that generally comes in/ inch or 3/4 inch and it comes in 100 foot rolls sometimes 50ft rolls for small projects so supply

Line we have the devices that are pressure reducer and filters very important for drip systems then we have connectors much like PVC pipe there are pronged connectors uh that are poked in into supply lines and put at the ends of emitter tubing and basically these connect your parts and pieces we talk

About the water delivery devices themselves the emitters emitters generally should go on what they call emitter Stakes they’re little Stakes that you put right next to the plant they’re little forked Stakes that you can slide your emitter tubing right into with the emitter here and it’s just

Above all your mulch and everything so it doesn’t get clogged I think it’s a complete and a professional way to do it so emitter staks are a big part of your parts and pieces list and lastly there’s your ground Stakes your ground Stakes are going to be little upu pins

Galvanized upu pins that you’re going to pound into the ground to hold your supply line down to the ground and not let it get all wavy along the ground when things get warm uh it’s going to make it look a lot more professional you’re going to take that supply line

And run it through that bed however it is so you can put emitters at every single plant that you need to do and your supply line is going to be secure to the ground with those ground Stakes so there you go chapter two covered a little different stuff than we did last

Week if you haven’t seen part one I’ll put a link to it right up here check it out and if you have any questions regarding a project you guys are doing I would appreciate an email or you can drop it in the comment below whatever

You want to do hey thanks for tuning in I hope I’ve earned to subscribe and certainly a thumbs up catch you guys next week as always to your landscape success and I’ll say goodbye for now