Micro sprinkler irrigation design

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Eric Ew

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Hi all,

I am new in this forum. I love gardening, mostly growing vegetables and fruit trees.
I am planning to implement an irrigation system in my garden, the picture below shows the layout. The garden landscape is complex, the top part is a flat landscape, where the bottom part is a slope (going down hill). The point of connection (POC) supplies water using 20mm HDPE polyethelyn pipe. I plan to use 25mm HDPE polyethelyn pipe hooking up to the POC as mainline (pink color line) to carry water up to approximately 45 feet distance away. Then i will be using 16mm LDPE polyethelyn tube to connect micro sprinklers to water the plants. For bottom part of the picture, it shows the tiny red lines that tapped from 16mm LDPE poly tube is to use 7mm micro tubing to create a loop with multiple micro sprinklers to water fruit tree.

Currently i am using 16mm LDPE poly tube + 7mm micro tubing with micro sprinklers for the entire garden (without creating looping back to mainline), however i see low pressure at the slope (bottom part of the layout), that's the reason why i am eagerly want to increase the mainline size and hope for significant improvement in terms of water pressure and flow rate.

Anyone here can help to comment if the irrigation layout look OK?

Flow rate at POC is roughly 7 GPM
Water pressure at the POC is roughly 45psi.

Thanks in advanced!


Garden_layout.JPG
 

WorthFlorida

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Micro irrigation is for a slow and long watering times to minimize run off and evaporation, so why do you want to increase pressure and flow? It looks like you have each zone in a loop which works best for micro irrigation. If you have drip irrigation products in Malaysia try to incorporate them into your garden especially where some vegetables can be damaged on sunny days with water on the leaves.
 

Eric Ew

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Micro irrigation is for a slow and long watering times to minimize run off and evaporation, so why do you want to increase pressure and flow? It looks like you have each zone in a loop which works best for micro irrigation. If you have drip irrigation products in Malaysia try to incorporate them into your garden especially where some vegetables can be damaged on sunny days with water on the leaves.

Thanks for the suggestion. What do you think if i change this system from Micro Sprinkler Irrigation to Micro Drip Irrigation? I have raised bed, container plants and fruit trees.
Again, currently i am employing Micro Sprinkler Irrigation and i turn on the system twice a day controlled by timer, each time will ON for 6 minutes, that is sufficient to maintain the plants that i am growing, but the irrigation can cause problem such as uneven watering coverage, low water pressure at the very last emitter.

So, switch to drip irrigation, and also to install more emitters for raised bed, create irrigation loop for the fruit trees and container plants to resolve uneven watering problem. I am newbie in irrigation, please advise if what i suggest will work?

Thank you very much!
 

WorthFlorida

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There is really no one answer and if micro works for you go for it. Both have there own advantages.

For drip irrigation the number of emitters is determined by your layout and plants. I used drip to water several large flower pots on a patio. I buried the small tubes under the patio pavers and branched off to each pot. It worked great with no wasted water laying around on the pavers that otherwise would cause unsightly mold and it eliminated daily hand watering. When a section of drip is not needed, it is very easy to pinch off the tubes and still have other sections working.

When I used micro drip for flower beds at my church, the only problem was pulling up dead plants or weeding and it was easy to accidentally catch the tubing. Sometimes the emitters would pop out and the small black plastic emitters were hard to find in black soil. I used micro drip since the flowers were next to the walkway and I did want water all over the place and getting people wet with spray heads.

With drip six minutes is not enough time for most needs. It is really slow watering so the time may need to be 30 minutes. A benefit with low water pressure. As with most gardening projects it’s trail and error to find what works best and that includes the vegetables you want to grow. Some will not do well if the soil isn’t right for it and others can take over the garden. When you are done with this project please post some pictures.
 

Eric Ew

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There is really no one answer and if micro works for you go for it. Both have there own advantages.

For drip irrigation the number of emitters is determined by your layout and plants. I used drip to water several large flower pots on a patio. I buried the small tubes under the patio pavers and branched off to each pot. It worked great with no wasted water laying around on the pavers that otherwise would cause unsightly mold and it eliminated daily hand watering. When a section of drip is not needed, it is very easy to pinch off the tubes and still have other sections working.

When I used micro drip for flower beds at my church, the only problem was pulling up dead plants or weeding and it was easy to accidentally catch the tubing. Sometimes the emitters would pop out and the small black plastic emitters were hard to find in black soil. I used micro drip since the flowers were next to the walkway and I did want water all over the place and getting people wet with spray heads.

With drip six minutes is not enough time for most needs. It is really slow watering so the time may need to be 30 minutes. A benefit with low water pressure. As with most gardening projects it’s trail and error to find what works best and that includes the vegetables you want to grow. Some will not do well if the soil isn’t right for it and others can take over the garden. When you are done with this project please post some pictures.

Thank you very much for the reply and sharing your experience. I will try micro drip first without buying additional fittings, if it works, then i will continue using it, else I will proceed to upgrade the mainline size and the new layout that i shown above. The real life example that you shared really make sense to me. It may take a while for me to experiment out different approach, but will share some pictures here after trying out.

Again, thank you so much for the reply!
 
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