There is a lot of interest out there about gravity-fed irrigation systems. The general concept is to gather rain water in a bucket, garbage can, or rain barrel and save it to use later for watering plants. The easiest way to do this is with Gravity Feed Drip Irrigation Kits.

Our kits include everything but the rain barrel.  You can buy a garbage can to start with and add our bulk head fitting.  The fitting creates a hose thread connection at the bottom of the barrel so that you can hook up a garden hose or drip system. All of our gravity feed kits include a bulk head fitting. This will allow you to convert any plastic bucket, barrel or garbage can to a rain barrel.

Check out this bulk-head fitting installation video to see how easy it is to install.

Tools you will need to install a bulk head fitting:

• Drill
• 7/8″ Hole Saw
• Channel Locks

 
 
 
We extensively tested our gravity feed components before we launched the kits in order to provide our customers with the best advice. Since the system is not under pressure, the output will vary from dripper to dripper throughout the system.

Here a few tips:

1. Short drip tubing runs. Emitter output drops off as you move farther away from the water source. You will get better results with grid layouts of short tubing lengths (20 ft or less) than with a long snaking drip tube.
2. Grid layout. We found that by connecting the ends together in a grid pattern, we were able to even out the flow rates between emitters.
3. Connect main line to the center of the grid. By connecting the main water supply line into the center of the grid you will further help to even the output of all drippers in the system..

For more information about gravity feed irrigation and detailed installation instructions, visit our Gravity Feed Drip Kits section.

We love hearing about customers’ drip irrigation projects. It’s very rewarding to know that we help folks save money on their drip irrigation supplies and save on their monthly water bills.  The savings are substantial. See how our customers, Olof and Helene, saved on their supplies and continue to save every month. Click on the images below to enlarge.

After removing the existing lawn, we now use only 20% of the household water.

Olof wrote:

“I am a weekend gardener and have been using your products for 1.5 years. (see attached photos; you can see the tubing)

Love your new website!  And the many new products you didn’t have in 2008.
My question:   Back then I purchased 4 DD-HEDT timers to be used with my 1/2″ tubing system.  By now I realize my garden requires manual timing. None of the Timers have been used, only one taken out of the box, all have been stored in a cabinet. Would you accept a “late” return ?

Regards, Olof

PS.  Amazing results.  After removing the existing lawn, we now use only 20% of the household water, relative to our first year with old sprinkler settings!”

That’s huge!

Needless to say, we are happy to refund customers on unused products. Olof is shipping the timers back to us for a refund.

Check out Olof’s picture on the left taken after the initial drip installation. He used 1/2″ drip poly tubing and flag emitters in his drip project. Below is the wonderful photo of the patio and established plants. (Click pics to enlarge) Olaf says that his wife, Helene, did the planning and lay-out and, with a little help, they did all the work.

How Olof & Helene saved even more…

They bought their drip irrigation supplies from us! Their order with Irrigation Direct totaled : $417.65. If they had purchased the same drip system at other online irrigation suppliers, here is what they would have paid (ouch):

Irrigation Direct: $417.65

DripWorks: $637.15

Drip Depot: $529.52

The Drip Store: $528.44

DripWorks Checkout Screen

Drip Depot Checkout Screen

The Drip Store Checkout Screen

And that’s how you double your savings with drip irrigation.

UPDATE: To save even more: Replace grass with shrubs

This morning I recieved this update from Olof:

There are actually at least 3 areas of savings: those 2 you have, and the 3rd:  monthly cost of mow & blow has been eliminated, not to mention the noise and air pollution they cause….

The USDA has 10 million dollars available for farmers in these California counties:

Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, & Tulare.

This is a great opportunity for those of you who have been considering converting to drip irrigation. As water cut-offs and restrictions make traditional watering methods more difficult, the water-saving benefits of low-volume irrigation are now being supported by government agencies.

The USDA will provide money for “highly water-efficient micro-irrigation systems”.

According to a USDA Press Release, this funding is in addition to the $3 million dollars NRCS provided to drought-stricken areas in 2009.

Make that money go farther with our factory-direct pricing:

• Drip Emitter Tubing
• Brown Dripperline
• Direct-Loc Fittings
• Solid Drip Tubing
• Drip Emitters

Sign Up Now: Drought Initiative runs through April 9, 2010.

The USDA provides financial assistance through it’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Read more about drought help at the NRCS website.

For more details, visit your local USDA Service Center.

Fresno County

Kern County

Kings County

Merced County

San Joaquin County

Stanislaus County

Tulare County

Northern California USDA Service Centers

Southern California USDA Service Centers

If you are just dying to know what Irrigation Direct is up to, you can now follow us on Twitter.

I’ll update you on new blog posts, drip irrigation tutorials, press releases, product launches, news from the green industry, and more. There is more coming. Lots more.

If you are worried about getting blasted with hourly messages about new warehouse shelving , a carpet change in the front office, or Ryan’s weekend plans, don’t be. I’ll keep it short (I have to…it’s Twitter).

Sign up here:  http://twitter.com/IrrigationTips

Along one side of our long fence, I planted a variety of plants that need drip type irrigation. There are about 8 plants in a row, with one 1/2″ capped outlet for water. Seeing the Drip 1/4″ (250) Flow Control Valve Barb x Barb suggested getting few of these in a row under the plants.  I am not sure how to mount the units if I put them in a long row.

The Flow Control Valve is not a drip emitter.

Think of it as an on/off switch for 1/4″ drip tubing. It’s a little more than that as it will reduce water flow if not completely closed. If you install a flow control valve onto drip tubing and use it as an emitter, you will get a large spray of water rather than the gentle flow associated with drip irrigation.

If I understand your situation, Neal, it sounds like you have a 1/2″ threaded PVC riser that is capped off and possibly part of an existing sprinkler system. My guess is that your water pressure in the system is too high to simply connect drip tubing & emitters to the riser. If that is the case, you’ll need to add a drip regulator to reduce the pressure. Read this tutorial to learn how to measure your water pressure.

Drip irrigation is generally designed to operate between 15-30 psi.

Connecting to the sprinkler system

Take a look at our Sprinkler Retrofit Tutorial for installation ideas. In particular, I would consider Option 3 (at the end of the tutorial). The part you need to connect to the 1/2″ riser is the DD-MH10 Adapter Fitting. It will screw onto the threaded riser. Follow the example for adding the inline filter, drip pressure regulator, and swivel adapter. The image below shows the same sort of set up but installed on a 3/4″ PVC pipe.

MH9 adapter fitting on PVC pipe > inline drip filter > pressure regulator > swivel adapter

Adding drip tubing & emitters (drippers)

From there you can add drip tubing and drip emitters (also called ”drippers”) to supply water to your plants. Pick up a few extra emitters with varying flow rates (1/2 gallon per hour, 1gph, 2gph) so that you can add more emitters if the water output to the plants is insufficient after your initial installation.

For most medium-to-large sized plants, two emitters per plant is sufficient. Place each emitter on either side of the plant’s center. Poke a hole in the drip tubing with a hole punch and push the barbed end of the emitter into the tubing like this…

Here’s what it looks like when watering on the drip tubing…

You can also install with a micro tubing stake and 1/4″ drip micro tubing…

Good luck with your project.

Send us your suggestions, project photos, and questions any time.

In the beginning, there was the compression coupler…

If you are familiar with installing drip irrigation, you have probably used compression fittings. They are commonly used with drip mainline tubing, dripperline, and drip emitter tubing (1/2″ or 3/4″). Compression drip fittings are a staple in the industry and feature rings on each end into which the drip tubing is inserted. Drip rings are color coded to match tubing size. Once the tubing is in there…it’s in there! It is really tough to remove the tubing from a compression fitting and may require a knife to actually cut the tubing out of the fitting.

This is fine if you don’t plan to make any changes to your drip system.

If you want the flexibility to change your drip system design or put away your drip lines for winter, try our Direct-Loc drip fittings. Also known as “Easy Loc”, “Perma Loc”, “Spin-Loc”, or “Power-Loc”, they twist onto main line drip tubing and are reusable. Direct-Loc fittings fit both 700 & 710 drip tubing (.700” & .710” Outer Diameter) which makes them more flexible than compression fittings. Just unscrew fittings to reuse or store tubing away for winter. There is no glue or Teflon tape required.

Here is how they work:

Step One: Spin the collar toward the base to expose the barb

Step Two: Slide drip tubing over the barb

Step Three: Spin the collar toward the barb & tighten over drip tubing

Step Four: Collar holds drip tubing tightly in place

Compare & Save Money with Irrigation Direct

We are happy to help you compare our prices with the competition. We’ll even link to their website to make it easy. As of this writing, here is a price comparison on a few of our Direct-Loc fittings vs. Drip Works, The Drip Store, and Drip Depot.

Click on the table to view all our Direct-Loc Fittings

Paul Polack’s solution to poverty is not handouts. He prefers to create entrepreneurs and develop sustainable markets so that communities can pull themselves out of poverty. His organization, International Development Enterprises (IDE), has designed human-powered treadle water pumps and inexpensive drip irrigation systems that help small farmers keep more of their profits, invest in themselves, and get their families out of poverty.

850 million rural people in the world today continue to earn less than one dollar a day.

-Paul Polack

When IDE began, they used “relief money” to give away their drip kits to poor farmers. They found that only 25% of the kits were put to use.  On the other hand, when customers paid full market value for the products, over 93% of them were used and produced more than 100% per year return on their investment. IDE combined micro financing and local manufacturing/distribution to create a local self-sustaining market.

In his book Out of Poverty, Paul illustrates how IDE helped small farmers save water, irrigate efficiently and, most importantly, make more money. He discusses his “12 steps for practical problem solving” which we can all use to create better solutions for our customers. I’ll include a review of his book in a future post.

–

Paul Polack’s 12 steps for practical problem solving

1. Go to where the action is.
2. Talk to the people who have the problem and listen to what they have to say.
3. Learn everything there is to know about the problem’s specific context.
4. If you come up with a solution to a problem, there is no reason to be modest.
5. Think like a child (to find the obvious solutions).
6. See and do the obvious (Immerse yourself in the problem).
7. If somebody already invented it, you don’t have to.
8. Make sure that your approach has positive measurable impact that can be brought to scale.
9. Design to specific price targets.
10. Follow practical 3-year plans.
11. Continue to learn from your customers (Paul interviews at least 100 customers per year).
12. Don’t be distracted by what other people say.

There is much more dignity in being a customer than in being a recipient of charity.
-Paul Polack

Every Monday we will feature a new customer irrigation solution of the week.

This question came in from Ruby…

Can any of your irrigation system be used to water potted plants inside a greenhouse? The pots are about 7 inches in height and 15 centimeters in diameter.

I gave Ruby three options.

1. Adjustable Stream Bubbler
2. 1/4” drip emitter tubing
3. 1/2 gallon drip emitter with stake

Each of these solutions will work with pots in a greenhouse (and flower pots on a deck for that matter). It is really just a matter of personal preference. I’ve written a detailed tutorial on greenhouse pots and drip irrigation.  You’ll find step by step instructions and sketches for each option. A parts list is included as well.

Here are a few quick points to consider:

• The staked options may work best when moving pots in and out of the greenhouse.
• For large numbers of pots, consider the 1/2 gallon-per-hour drip emitters. You can fit more of them per drip line than stream bubblers.
• Stream bubblers may be the best solution for larger pots as they are adjustable from six inches to three feet.

Good luck! Let us know how this works for you. If you have an example of a creative solution to a drip irrigation problem, please share it. Include your questions too.

Irrigation Direct recommends planning your watering schedule and writing it down on a Water Scheduling Form before you do any actual programming of your controller (timer). There are so many variables (soil type, sprinklers, drip systems, wind, sunny areas, shady areas, slopes, etc.) that it is impossible for us to give you an exact formula for how to program your irrigation controller. Each watering station (zone) will have different requirements. Spend a little time to understand the water needs of the plants in each zone.

Start by answering these four questions: 

1. How LONG should I water each station? 

2. How OFTEN should I water each station?

Now that you have determined how long it takes to saturate the soil you will need to estimate how long it takes for the water to evaporate. This will vary throughout the year depending on temperature, wind, shade and sun. You will find that some zones will need water more frequently than others. Making these adjustments is easy with our DMC Controller. It has three different programs and four different start times to accommodate any scheduling requirement.

3. What TIME OF DAY should I water?

It is usually recommended that you water 1 to 3 hours before sunrise, when water pressure is optimal.  However, you may be competing with the neighbors for water pressure. Pay attention to your neighborhood watering patterns to determine the best time to begin watering. Early morning watering is best for most plants as well. Less water will evaporate in the early morning hours, and some leaves will burn if watered in the heat of the day.  

4. On WHAT DAYS should I water?

During extreme heat you may have to water every day. Regular activities around your house will influence your choice of watering days. Suggestions for non-watering days: The day your gardener comes,  the day you do your gardening, weekend barbecues, and children’s play days.

A Few Tips…

• Make Seasonal Adjustments. Create your watering schedule based on mild weather conditions for your area. In most cases this will be in early spring. From there you can use the “Seasonal Adjustment” feature on your controller. For example, in the summer you can increase your overall watering duration, and in the fall you can decrease it.
• Install a rain sensor with your controller. This will turn the system off until the rain stops and things dry out.
• Watch for runoff.  Be green and save money too. Check often for excessive runoff from your irrigation system as well as puddles or pools of water.
• Check brown spots closely. Disoloration is not always a sign of under watering. Often, overwatering will cause grass to look sickly. Check the soil moisture before making adjustments to your watering schedule. If your lawn has brown spots, it may need fertilizing, aeration, or disease control.