Irrigation

I thought I would start a thread named "Irrigation". In the photo below is our new bed of perfumed Ht and Flori, with some old fashions thrown in. All of our beds are watered this way, including our vege patch.
The new bed system is from 25ml poly down to 19ml risers, Philmac tap, 13ml blank poly,then 2 drippers either side of the rose @ 8lt/h.
I also find by making a continuous loop, no dead ends the system works better.

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Hi Roseman,
You've got a good hydraulic system setup. With continuous loops the water gets fed from both directions and you can minimise pipe diameter unlike branched systems where you may have to use larger diameter pipes to ensure the water gets to its destination. Therefore you save on setup costs and have a much more efficient system.
Cheers,
Louise

Can I ask politely, your background knowledge to "water/hydrology" systems Louise ?

Hi Roseman,
I have a background in water reticulation engineering for urban water supplies. I specialise in creating and maintaining water and sewer computer models for local government. It helps with their forward planning for new infrastructure.
Cheers,
Louise.

LouiseJB wrote:Hi Roseman,
I have a background in water reticulation engineering for urban water supplies. I specialise in creating and maintaining water and sewer computer models for local government. It helps with their forward planning for new infrastructure.
Cheers,
Louise.

when I buy my property , Louise, would you like a trip to the West....?

I've never been that far west Neptune, so I might just take you up on that but if you need any advice on what to avoid when buying property just let me know. From my perspective you should avoid any property with water and sewer mains running through your backyard especially if they have easements over them. If anything goes wrong with either system you may just lose your whole backyard with probably no compensation from the local municipality.
Cheers,
Louise.

One of the few things I remember from Hydraulics at Uni is a closed loop enables you to reduce pipe diameter whilst maintaining pressure.

We don't have irrigation on our roses (thinking about it) but we do have a bore and a dam with a large pipe loop around the garden with two cross links to help maintain the pressure through the system (as well as provide taps in the middle of the garden).

All very technical for me, lol, but interesting

paulh wrote:All very technical for me, lol, but interesting

Paul it is not technical, just "WaterWise" as they say in NSW. Thinking of how to utilize what you have at hand. I am on well water, not town mains water. The company(Think Water) which we use for the vineyard is owned by a fella named Rahn(Israeli). They invented the efficient use of water in thier climate. So I go with the flow.  As Gary mentioned(all was not lost at Uni Gary), by using the system I have I was able to use 13ml pipe instead of using 25ml to get the amount of delivery.  The same applies to my garden hoses, I use 19ml/ 3/4" pipe instead of 13ml for the same reason.

Quote Gary , "We don't have irrigation on our roses (thinking about it)"
Gary in the area which you live, do you rely on the water much for the gardens or is it to supplement your climate. ?

We don't need the irrigation unless we have (like last year) 6 months without rain. Our bore is not flash so we can only run one hose/sprinkler at a time.

My father in law left a little pump here and I worked out by using it to pump out of the dam and running it directly into the bore and then using the bore pump to go up the existing pipes we can use 8 sprinklers.

However, using the big sprinklers is real waste of water so if we used an irrigation system with the smaller sprinklers we would be able to use the water more efficiently.

Of cause I have these ideas and schemes when it is dry. I have a big roll of 12mm pipe and sprinklers somewhere in the shed from an earlier dry spell that was broken the day after I bought the merchandise and at present we don't need to water so putting in irrigation is the last thing on my ever growing list.

I don't have any irrigation at my place at all. Last year I watered my baby hydrangeas with a hose and a watering can. Now that I have a lot more plants I will have to set something up, but this is all waaaaay too technical for my understanding.

I understand what a closed loop is, as opposed to something with 'dead ends' but the rest is lost on me.

I was thinking about getting some of that green plastic soaker hose from Bunnies and snaking in through the rose beds, then putting mulch on top of it. I have no idea though, really.

Our house is plumbed to our 20,000L water tank but our garden taps run off the mains water.

Any advice?

Our house is plumbed to our 20,000L water tank but our garden taps run off the mains water.

Zoe, is the mains water metered ?

I use 12mm poly around the main garden beds and no risers/sprinklers - I just use the hole punching gadget (for poly pipe) to place holes where I want them and then cover it with mulch. Works well but don't bother asking me what the l/hr is ... haha
(We run off rainwater tanks but we can supplement the garden tank with well water)

Is poly better than that clear green plastic stuff? Seems like you all use poly... But my beds will have stuff growing all through them, not just the roses, so I'm wondering...

Yep, mains is metered David. I have to pay for it. At the moment it's mostly just the cost of service connection and sewerage on the bill, and about $5 of actual water use, hah.

All depends (in regard to poly vs clear green). We are on gravity-feed for water here so not mains pressure. I found the green stuff wasn't effective enough.
We use the poly for everything - just put a hole where you need it. The soil doesn't get wet in one discreet spot - it does spread a bit.

Ok, thanks Wendy. I think we might have that issue if we run off the tank water too.

Plus I have this awful memory from growing up in Perth, where that green plastic stuff sort of melts and cracks in the sun, and sticks to your thongs if you step on it...

muscovyduckling wrote:.
, where that green plastic stuff sort of melts and cracks in the sun, and sticks to your thongs if you step on it...

Yep..your right , Zoe....they are not UV protected......

Zoe I was hoping that you might not have a meter, free water. $5.00 is not to bad, As you plant your garden I think this will go up unless your tank will do the house and garden. You could possibly supplement by using both. As Wendy mentioned hers is gravity fed, I assume your would be by pressure from the tank.
The green soaker hose will last for a very short time as mentioned. If you have other plants in your garden besides the roses I would go for blank poly(no holes or drippers in it), this will give you the advantage of using sprinklers for some areas and drippers for the roses. I guess what we need to establish is, how much rain do you get and do you need to water at all, With "all" your spare time you could just hand water.

Thanks John and David. 

Regarding rainfall, we get quite a lot here - somewhere between 1000-1500mm annually. But the last two years we had very hot and dry summers, so I will definitely have to water for a few months a year at least. I'm not going to water the lawn or the established trees though. They have been fine so far.

So, apart from roses, I have 15 baby fruit trees that will need a drink, lots of baby camellias and a couple of viburnum and daphne, lots of star jasmine and lots of hydrangeas, and 16 blueberries. And then all the perennials like penstemon, gaura, sage, phlox, aquelligia, hollyhock, hellebores, gardenia, peonies etc etc. And some ferns and violets.

So do you think a combo of drip and sprinklers is the way to go, or just drip/soak near the plants?

Oh and yes, we have a pump that runs the tank water but the pressure is not the same as the mains. I don't know what the pressure is.

I was interested to read that irrigation that is in a continuous loop is more efficient than that which has dead ends.

I have in the vicinity of 75% of my roses on an automatic drip system running off three town water taps the plan is to have all roses being irrigated after I shovel prune all the rose that aren't contributing to the AQ's and my exhibition endeavours. In saying the roses wil be shovelled pruned isn't quite correct as they wil be dug up and replanted in another location.

Ausrose wrote:I was interested to read that irrigation that is in a continuous loop is more efficient than that which has dead ends..

It is also interesting to note that all irrigation that is put down for domestic use here, have all dead ends......I think that they work on the principal that dead ends create back pressure and is more efficient.....

neptune wrote:

Ausrose wrote:I was interested to read that irrigation that is in a continuous loop is more efficient than that which has dead ends..

It is also interesting to note that all irrigation that is put down for domestic use here, have all dead ends......I think that they work on the principal that dead ends create back pressure and is more efficient.....

It the pipe is a continuous loop the pressure comes both ways.

If I could remember the formulae (its been a long time and I don't have the books anymore) I could show you. Loops also enable the pipe size to be reduced whilst maintaining pressure. Alternatively a loop using the same pipe size as the dead ends can have the same pressure as two dead ends but have a significantly greater length.

It is however in a lot of cases not efficient to create the loops as this may need up to double the pipe length so dead ends are used. It all comes down to garden design, the source of the water and the economics of having the loops.

As I have said previously our watering lines from a bore which we can supplement with water from a dam. We more or less have a 25mm pipe doing a loop around the garden with a couple of 25mm pipes linking across the loops (so we more or less have 3 loops joined together if you get my drift. There are series of taps along these 25mm lines so any part of the garden can be reached by a normal gardening hose.

Ideally if we were to put in irrigation we would link the small pipes between the taps. This would provide pressure both ways and would allow a longer stretch of irrigation that if we were to have two dead ends.

because we sit on a huge water table here that starts about 6 meters under the surface, people sink a bore which runs on single phase power. Then they run a 40mm pipe front and rear.......from there they reduce that to 25mm or 20mm....

Gary, do the words "friction loss" come to mind from school/uni lessons ?