Design Tips

- Drip is inherently flexible and provides plenty of room for changes. Once the system is installed, you can adapt it to apply more or less water in certain areas by changing or adding emitters.  This adaptability means your initial design does not have to be perfect; and your system can be expanded or modified as you add and subtract plants.

- Familiarize yourself with different Raindrip emitter devices so you know how each plant type is watered best. You will be able to mix and match different devices on a single zone to apply different amounts of water to each plant location.

- If you have some plants that need more water, don’t run the system more.  Just add emitters to those plants.
rain_barrels

If you have a water cache or rain barrel, you can connect your drip system to it. 

- Place watering devices to wet at least 60% of the root zone of the plant.

- To measure the available water flow for drip system operation, turn on the faucet full force, using a bucket of known volume and noting the seconds it takes to fill. Example:  A 5-gallon bucket filling in 30 seconds would provide 10 GPM.   Using 70% of available flow is safe and allows for other household uses simultaneous to drip operation.  GPM x 60 = GPH.   So 10 GPM = 600 GPH. In this example, we could use 70% = 7 GPM which is 420 GPH.

- Each drip watering zone should be kept to 150 GPH or less.

- Use in-line shutoff valves to turn off parts of a drip zone. This can be helpful in vegetable gardens to deactivate certain areas after crops are harvested.

- Drip irrigation can be used with rainwater harvesting barrels and tanks.  Elevate the tank or use a small pump to create water pressure. Standard electric irrigation valves do not work with in rainwater systems due to low pressure, consider automatic ball valves or run it manually.
- Use multiple water sources, if available, to avoid long distance runs of tubing or to work around landscape obstacles like walkways. Do not run ½” mainline tubing longer than 200 feet.