Irrigation

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Irrigation

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tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45420
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 06 3:53 pm Post subject: Irrigation
I'm having an irrigation system installed, there are two options either drip hose (not leaky, it's like a semi rigid pipe with holes in it) or fine spray heads. Anybody got experience of either? I used to use leaky pipes at my old house bit everybody says that they'll be nothing but trouble on this scale.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 06 6:10 pm Post subject:
water the soil not the plant ,maybe . take local advice for your land ,get several quotes . cant really help more than that .sorry .

Platypus

Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 56
Location: Hampshire

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 06 6:59 am Post subject:

It is usually better to drip the water onto the soil rather than spray it everywhere as it is less wasteful.

But getting the drip heads to deliver the water evenly can be fiddley (some WILL drip faster than others!). Especially if your water is particularly hard, as the small holes in the drippers can clog up with calcium.

Of course spraying also increases humidity, which you may or may not want to do.

In my (v. small) greenhouse I have installed drippers for the plants and a sprayer that damps down the floor to increase humidity.

James

Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 2866
Location: York

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 06 9:28 am Post subject:

I “WOOF’d” on a small farm that had spray irrigation, and every day I had to go around and check every spray nozzle because they had a tendency to block up- either due to fine particles in the pipe (soil, grit etc..), or due to mineral build up at the nozzle. He had something like 5-10 rows each with maybe 30 irrigation points, and each day around a dozen would have failed. He was in the process of changing all his nozzles to drip irrigators- the delivery nozzle could be screwed open or closed so that the flow to each irrigation point could be adjusted independently.
The thing he’d worked out was that the nozzle must easily be cleaned, and must have an adjustable flow.

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