Ready to get started on your irrigation project?
Here’s a few of the things you should do before you start shopping online for those sprinklers, drippers and controllers.
- A plan of the garden is a great first step. Using some squared grid paper map out the areas of your garden: lawn, garden beds, vegetable patch, trees etc. Use a simple scale e.g. one cm² is equivalent to 1 m².
- Mark your garden plan with important things like water access points, power supplies and any areas that you need to keep dry like a fire pit or barbecue area.
- Measure the time in seconds it takes to fill a bucket of known volume from the tap you’ll be using at full pressure. Divide the volume by the time and multiply by 60 to give you the maximum flow rate per minute. In our case, it took 18 seconds to fill up a 10-litre bucket, so the sum is 10 ÷ 18 x 60 = 33.33 litres per minute. This number will be used to select the number and type of products you’ll need to use as well as the size of any potential watering zones.
- Next, list the plant types you’ll be irrigating, and think about what the most suitable method is of irrigating them.
Now comes the tricky part.
Most home gardeners will call on the services of an irrigation designer at this point, and they can work out for you the best layout, types of sprinklers, and zoning pattern etc. Blue Bucket has a team of irrigation designers able to help. Call us on 1800 191 138 or email your details through to admin@bluebucket.com.au and we’ll work with you to come up with a design.
If you’re feeling brave and would like to do the design yourself refer to our other blog ‘Selecting the Right Irrigation Products’ (coming soon).
There is more than one way to bake a cake
Like this old saying, there will always be several designs that will do the job. If you talk to three different designers, you’re likely to get at least three different ideas for the irrigation design. That doesn’t mean that any of them will be wrong, they’re just taking a different way of solving your situation. And like the other old saying, the cheapest option isn’t always the best option. You’ll need to consider water efficiency, excavation lengths and time amongst other issues to get the best outcome for your own garden situation.