Drip Irrigation and Backflow Prevention
Yes it's that time to seriously start thinking about the yard and garden. With drought comes new ways of looking at garden design.
Many of us are going to "xeric gardening". Myself I'm leaning towards automating my garden for less work out in the heat.
Installing drip irrigation and automatic sprinklers is a great time and labor saver...after the initial installation. (ugh)
I found a great how-to web site on do-it-yourself irrigation. Lowes and some sprinkler manufactures have their own how to do it with their products info. Some will design your system for you if you send them your yard dimensions. That's nice, but check this site out first to give you a more knowledgable base to make these labor intensive and expensive yard irrigation decisions.
irrigation tutorials
Another VERY important part of installing an irrigation system is backflow prevention. Underground lawn sprinkler systems usually require a permit from the city. They will specify the kind of backflow prevention device they require.
For drip irrigation systems the city may not require a permit.
No permit does not mean backflow protection is not necessary. Backflow protection keeps the water in your house safe. For instance on toilets, all the new ballcocks/flushvalves have a vacuum breaking device. This is because prior to this people were getting blue ice cubes, intestinal problems etc. They were drinking their toilet water because of backflow.
Do you want to drink dog poop, fertilizer, pesticides? Then install a backflow preventer. Yes, even on a drip irrigation system. At the very least have a vacuum breaker on your hose bibb and a cheap pvc check valve on your discharge line to your irrigation system. This will sometimes protect you.
My two favorites are a "double check" backflow preventor. (Technically it needs to be tested every year and I differ with the web site author). And the best bang for the buck, the PVD vacuum breaker. Note it MUST be installed atleast 6 inches higher than the highest point of your irrigation system or it will not work.
Here is a link explaining backflow devices.
backflow devices
Hope you find this info helpful. Now here are some gratuatious photos of birds I have snapped recently.
Reader Comments
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I'm luck here on the prairie. I use well water to water my lawn in the summer. I guess it just recirculates the water. Being in the ancient mouth of the Assiniboine river we're over a sand layer that has abundant water. I can pump water 24-7 from the 14 foot deep well with my 1/2 horse pump.
The city water is from the Assiniboine river and is collected behind the dam built for the Portage Diversion.
Enjoy your day.
There was a few that even the robot was at least a taste of steam-punk. One was pretty into it where the costumes the team had on leaned hard that way.
Any progress on the drip system yet?
How about torrential irrigation! Do you remember at the end of the last year I had a damaged plinth under the water butt that collected rain water from the conservatory roof, which I couldn't repair until I was strong again, nor leave full, in case it fell off the damaged plinth and split. 75 gallons going on my rock garden in one fell swoop would have been a drop too much! So I attached a hose to the open tap and put the other end in the pond...
All winter it has worked a treat, any excess has run away into the pond and the overflow goes out to an artificial stream, away from the garden.
Well, last night, we must have had torrential rain. The pond is full to the top, and behind it, where the little pebble steam runs, there is a lake!
The only good to come of this is the big hedge at the bottom of the garden is getting a good drink!
Any geeky outings this weekend, or are you having a weekend at home:)
Just sent your DIY Irrigation link to my daughter.
I helped her - she wanted to DIY it herself but needed tools and advice - install the pipes and sprinklers last fall but we have yet to connect the controls and water up the system for a couple of reasons:
1) It was promising to get below freezing and the distribution pipes are buried very shallow.
2) The wall where the control would be mounted was not in place at the time.
Now that we look at warmer conditions and the wall is finally in place I'll be fiddling with the setup and checking back here to see how your system installation proceeds. So far I have not seen any installation nor instruction manuals for the complex controls.
Wow do I feel hung-over. I don't actually drink, just wore out from a waaay busy weekend. We got up early, met some people for early lunch in Plano. Then went to Dallas Farmers Market (We have to kill time because the Pinball Convention doesn't start until 5pm) If you have ever seen Dallas traffic on Friday it made no sense to go back home...just continue to Dallas find things to do.
Then we played pinball until midnight. Weeeeeee!
Hi Skyepony, Yeah I figured you would get some hardcore steampunks. Some of those people are pure genius in making cool mechanical stuff. Your robo competitions sound more interesting than the "rock-em-sock-em" robot thing the sci-fi channel is hyping.
Hi Tony, it's good you have an abundance of water. They predict that the Dallas-Ft Worth metroplex will run out of water by 2040.
Hi Briar, yeah, the indoor bonsai thing hasn't worked real great. I have three left. The others would do really good, flower/fruit, flower/fruit and then die over night it seemed. Haven't figured out why. Will see how the carnivores do over time...although I will most likely go to the next Bonsai convention that comes to Dallas and pick up a few more ;)
Got all my supplies for running the drip system. Hope to have that finished this week. Currently all the hose is stretched out around the yard to straighten up.
Hi Sandi, Dang, what kind of weather are you all having? So glad it didn't freeze right after that rain. Sounds like you have lots of projects including flood abatement engineering to work on. All we lack to get these things done is time and money.
Hi Ycd, I have a small yard so instead of messing with controls boxes I am just running individual 50' service lines with laterals then attaching to timers as my "zones" for the drip irrigation. If I get around to underground sprinkler for the lawn I may get fancy.
May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.
~Irish Blessing
Wishing you a very happy Saint Patrick's Day.....pity you have to work!
Do you know that I read you had been 'paint' balling when I saw your comment in my blog.... And the thought of you doing that energetic game until midnight....!
Pin balling is still energetic, but you are only exercising your arms and not your legs!! lol
Happy St. Paddy's From Texas.
Hi WTS, the convention was fun. No I don't collect machines but wish I had. They have added a few thousand to the price tags since I started going to these things.
Good Morning Prose, thanks for the Irish Blessing. Are those crocus yours?
Hi Sandi, Paint Balling, that's funny. Me in full camo with a scary helmut jumping out from behind walls shouting; "Eat paint" with gun blazing. *Hmmm*
*thought evaporates as reality sets in...Paintball hurts. I'll stick with lazer tag ;)
It's a lovely morning here, after a warm night. I saw some rain mentioned in the forecast, but I'm not going to make any to-do about that, lest I scare it off. ;)
Free sci-fi book. My kind of link.
I have a couple of guys coming either this afternoon, or tomorrow to repair the gutter. One of the brackets has come off, allowing the gutter to drop and expel water over the edge. The guy who went up said the gutter was full of debris - he even took photos to show me... so they are cleaning them out as well.
While having coffee with the Queen on Sunday morning we witnessed a strange thing with a flock of birds, I couldn't see the species but the flew to one tree, a Russian Olive in the neighbor's yard, stayed a couple of minutes and flew away only to return minutes later. I can't guess what that was all about.
I wonder if they had anticipated the approaching storm.
Enjoy the day.
Thought of you this weekend when I saw something very "steampunk" but it is not steampunk - it's the real deal!
I didn't photo the plaque but memory tells me these were science-grade microscopes made for wealthy hobbyists. I only took the one pic and it's fuzzy but I still think it's cool looking :)
Hi Sandi, I'm always torn between hiring people and doing it myself. Problem is I do it better so it chaps my hindside to pay someone for mediocre work.
On the other hand, if it's gutters and such it is worth it.
Hi Plapman, guess the birds were checking out which tree had the best buffet.
Hi Shore, that is a great link. I may re-post it in my next blog. I've used about half the plants they have listed. Belindas Dream is an amazing shrub rose. Much prettier than the Knock-Outs.
Hi Ylee, yes they had a few of the old guys. My new co-worker buys those, refurbishes and sells them on e-bay.
Hi Sig, yeah it's the trench that wore me out. I did close to 80 feet six inches deep. Today it was the cloudy day and strong wind that wore me out. When this is done though, it will be great.
Hi Sp, you have to hand it to the Victorians, they could really work some brass. I'm amazed that they could grind decent lenses. So as we evolve to electronic everything, are we losing our ability to use our hands for making complex things?
"
As long as we have things like the robot contest that Skyepony promoted on her blog, I think we're in good shape! As long as we keep our desire to create, we'll be fine! :' )
Back to work today?
Hope it is a good week - and one day soon you should be able to get out and deal with your drip feed system, and I should be able to get into the garden to deal with the winter mess! ...One day...!
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