How To Install Drip Irrigation | DIY Drip Irrigation

hi guys it's dee and welcome to dee's yard today i am setting up some more drip irrigation in my backyard and i want to share the full process with you the best way in my opinion to explain what drip irrigation is is how we can simply get water from point a a water source to point b our plant's roots by using a network of tubing valves and emitters the most common water source used is hose bibs and sprinkler valves now i do not have a sprinkler system so my water source will be my backyard hose bib but before we go any further let's go over the pros and cons of a drip irrigation system the biggest benefit is to water effectively and efficiently because you can customize a system to get water to your plant's roots you place a precise amount of water where you need it which conserves water and saves money using emitters instead of a garden hose or sprinklers provides less water waste to runoff or evaporation because of the targeted slow drip to a plant's roots so not only are we saving time by not having to water each plant by hand but our plants will be happier by not constantly being watered overhead which in turn reduces likeliness for fungus weeds and mildew spread drip irrigation is also very easy to install and you can customize it to your personal needs make it as small or as large as you want the only con that i can think of is maybe the initial cost for the system but for me in just one season i come out ahead with the cost and time savings before we go to the next step i did want to mention that drip irrigation may seem very overwhelming at least it did for me at first but once you jump into it and get going it starts coming together and makes sense drip irrigation is very forgiving and it's super easy to adjust and fix any mistakes so as with any project the first step for me is to plan the drip irrigation system no matter how big or how small the size of your irrigation system these parts are needed to connect to your water source in my case i'm starting at my hose bib or outdoor faucet i already have a hose splitter or four-way manifold the one i use is by orbits and can handle four attachments this is where my garden hose attaches and here's the start of my drip irrigation now i use a battery app at orbitz timer and i highly recommend getting a timer i don't set it and forget it i water based on my plants needs but i still need a timer because i'm human and i'll forget it's running so even though i manually turn it on this ensures that it turns off when i want it to and i love the option of being able to set it and forget it if i was going out of town or something i'm sure you noticed prior to the timer that i have a three-quarter inch water hammer arrestor tee installed and that is simply a precaution because timers do shut off water abruptly so this absorbs a shock when flowing water and a piping system suddenly stops now i've personally never had any issue with water hammer but i just want to ensure that the timer gives no damaging effects to my pipes when it does shut off and i will make sure to link all the products i use down below including the main company site that i get all of my drip system parts from the hose splitter or four-way manifold water hammer arrestor t and timer are all optional my timer has two zones zone one and zone two and from there all the parts are the exact same the filter just looks a little bit different from the timer the next installed equipment is called a backflow preventer also known as a hose vacuum breaker this prevents contamination it doesn't let the water enter your home's water supply downfall from that is a three-quarter inch thread filter and there's a mesh screen inside from keeping dirt and particles from clogging up your drip emitters then from the filter i have a three-quarter inch hose pressure regulator psi of 25 or pounds per square inch this regulates or levels the pressure within the drip irrigation system you normally use 25 psi for poly tubing if you were installing drip tape you would use a different amount of pressure or pounds per square inch downflow from the pressure regulator i have a female hose three quarter inch adapter or you would use a half inch based on what size tubing you are using here i have a three quarter inch here i'm using a half inch tubing the adapter is used to connect the poly tubing also known as the main line of any size to a standard three-quarter inch male hose garden thread so really quick let's just recap and go over all the parts needed to hook up to our backyard hose faucet first i have a hose splitter or four-way manifold this is completely optional i just have this so i can split off my garden hose as well as my drip system then i have a three-quarter inch water hammer rest or tea this is completely optional then i have a timer this is optional but highly recommended and the rest of the parts from the timer you should have for your system we have a backflow preventer a filter pressure regulator and then from there an adapter this one is a three quarter inch hose adapter this one is a half inch hose adapter and then from there we have our main line three quarter inch main line one half inch main line and today i'll be working on installing some more three-quarter inch main line we will use my backyard for this example but just remember you can customize this for your needs first locate your point a for me here is my hose bib now i need water available on the entire perimeter of my fence this will be one run [Music] and then i'll also have a run on this side to go around my shed to do that i'm going to use this tubing as my main line it's also called distribution tubing and will act as a water supply for your system to figure out what size tubing to use for your personal needs you can check out this helpful chart on dripdepot.com which is where i get all my supplies from the website is super helpful and has a wealth of knowledge in the drip system world the site is also linked down below after measuring the distance i need for tubing i'm going with three-quarter inch for my mainline tubing here's the roll of three-quarter inch mainline that i'll be installing around the perimeter of my fence remember this has no emitters this is just basic tubing that attaches to my water source a pro tip is to lay the tubing out in the sun for a bit this makes it softer and easier to work with first attach the main line to the three-quarter inch female hose adapter at your water source and start laying out the tubing which for me is around the border i also use some landscape staples to tack down the tubing every so often once i reach a corner i use a 3 4 inch barb elbow to achieve a 90 degree turn to cut my tubing i always use my garden pruners [Music] after i install the barbed elbow the main line continues until the next 90 degree turn is required [Music] so [Music] once i reach the end of my main line i use my pruners to cut the tubing and i install a permalock end cap which makes it very easy to drain the water for overwintering now it's time to install my other main line used on the other side of my yard remember i broke my yard up into two sections in order to attach the tubing to the three-quarter inch female hose adapter that is connected to my water source i have to feed the tubing under my deck to connect again i use my pruners to cut and add a barb elbow around every corner [Music] once i ran out of that roll of tubing i needed a way to connect more tubing so i use a three-quarter inch barb coupler if you ever cut any of your tubing especially by accident a coupler will do the trick to connect the tubing back [Music] together once i reach the end of this garden bed around my shed i attach a permalock end cap and now both main lines are complete the next part is completely optional but you can bury the poly tubing in a shallow trench to conceal it as it crosses a path or small section of the lawn but for longer lengths especially in high traffic areas you will probably want to substitute for pvc pipe instead [Music] now that we have our main line set up the next step is to get water to our plant's roots now there are so many ways and options to do this and i'm going to show you a couple using the shade garden bed if you are interested on running a tree ring type drip then i'll link that video here and down below this garden bed is broken up to three layers the front of the garden will be planted up with more plants than the other two layers again you can completely customize and modify the drip to your own garden needs first i need to get water from the main line to my different layers to do this i'm going to use a barb tee this barb tee has three quarter inch on either side but the middle reduces to a half inch so i can use a half inch tubing if your main line is already half inch you would just need a half inch t you would not need the reducing part i make a cut with my pruners and attach the three quarter inch tubing and then add in half inch tubing i'm using half inch poly tubing with no holes or emitter this is just to get water to the front of the garden once i make it to the front i add a half inch barb elbow and connect half inch strip tubing this drip tubing has one gallon per hour emitters space every 18 inches apart i'm just going to weave the drip tubing through and tack the tubing with landscape staples once i reach the end i cut the tubing and use a half inch coupler to connect back to a half inch blank tubing then i make my way back to the three quarter inch main line and connect the tubing back with a barb tee to have continuous flow because this is the most commonly used method i'm going to show you the process again but around my garden shed [Music] for a recap i teed into the three-quarter inch main line with a three-quarter inch reduced to half inch t added a half inch drip line this drip tubing has one gallon per hour emitters every 18 inches once completed with the drip tubing i use a half inch elbow connect half inch tubing without emitters and tie it back to the main line the other method i want to show you is great to use if plants are spaced further apart and you want to stay water wise and not water the weeds i'm back at my shade garden and going to t into my half inch tubing that i use to get to the front of the bed i use a half inch barb tee and attach more half inch tubing without any emitters i end up connecting the end of this row to the half inch drip line i used earlier a pro tip is to use hot water to soften up your tubing if it's giving you trouble to connect to a barb attachment [Music] now that i have a line of water running through my second row in the garden bed i'm just punching holes and placing emitters directly to each plant if the plant's root ball isn't close enough to the tubing i take a quarter inch tubing also known as micro tubing attach it to a quarter inch coupler and add an emitter to the end you can hack into any tubing to do this including the drip line when choosing emitters and drip tubing with built-in emitters a good starting point is half gallon per hour drippers in clay soil one gallon per hour drippers and loam soil and two gallon per hour drippers in sandy soil [Music] so you guys i just trialled the water to see how everything went and i had two tees below and they were all on the three-quarter inch barb that goes to a half inch see how that half inch has just fallen off just like that so this blue and i feel like that's kind of what i get when i went with a barbed tee i try to be more cost efficient but it is better to get something called a permalock i end up ordering some of these as well this also is a three quarter inch and goes to a half inch but they're super nice permalocks because you just put the tubing in there and you screw it on to lock it in place so customer service at drip depot recommended since i already invested into the barbed tee instead of replacing them all with the permalock i can get something called a worm gear clamp and this is in three quarter inch they always recommend to size up so let's see how this does [Music] i use a flathead screwdriver to tighten it [Music] one thing i really like around drip irrigation is it's so easy to fix your mistakes and to modify the system nothing has to be set in stone with drip irrigation and i really appreciate that there's always an easy fix for everything all right so that's on there nice and tight hopefully we don't have any more issues so again thank you to drip depot they end up saving me a lot of money because i was about to just replace all these with a permalock instead i just bought a few of them and these clamps were a lot cheaper and that was an easy fix one other thing i wanted to show you if you happen to punch a hole into any of the tubing whether it's three quarter inch or a half inch one easy fix is using something called a goof plug and all you do is just insert that into the hole and then it's fixed there won't be any leaking okay so it's on and running and it looks like the clamp did the trick no more leaks and no more blows however i would still recommend just getting the permalock instead of having to do the barbed and the clamp okay for a recap i'm going to show you the two methods that i use the first method that i use on the border is the most commonly used for garden beds and this is just a drip line this one has emitter space every 18 inches and it is one gallon per hour in order to get water to that drip line i came in to my main line tubing this is my three-quarter inch tubing that i have hooked up to my outdoor faucet again you may be only using half inch but because i used three quarter inch i needed a tee that reduced to a half inch again i would recommend the permalock tee instead of the barbed especially when it comes to reducing that's why i have a clamp here so i end up putting a half inch tubing on just to get down to where my drip line is once i reach my first plant and drip line i came in with a 90 degree elbow this is a half inch barbed elbow and then i attached the drip line which again has one gallon per hour emitter space every 18 inches and i just ran that around the border of the garden bed and i tacked it down every four or five feet or so with landscape staples this provides a nice coverage for any densely spaced plants [Music] [Music] once i reached my last set of plants i came in with a half inch coupler and then added on a half inch tubing that has no emitters [Music] and then that meets up again with my main line this is the three quarter inch mainline tubing that have around the perimeter and i added in the t there as well and then if one of your plants seems like it's too far from its root ball you can come in with a quarter inch coupler add quarter inch micro tubing and at the end place in a minute now i'm going to do a recap on the second method that i use and i'm just using half inch blank tubing that's coming across from one point to the other i did not use drip line because the plants here are not densely spaced and i didn't want a lot of water going to waste [Music] so here's my half inch tubing that went down to the other drip line and i came in with a half inch barb tea and add another half inch tubing and just snake that through the garden [Music] bed [Music] i ended up stopping the half inch tubing at my drip line so i just cut the drip line and added in a half inch tee and once i reach a plant i just punch a hole and add an emitter and i'm using both half gallon per hour and one gallon per hour depending on what the plant needs here's another one punched a hole add an emitter [Music] same thing there and on any plant that i felt that the emitters were not going to reach the root ball i just punched a hole at a quarter inch coupler quarter inch micro tubing and then added at the end when it comes to setting up drip irrigation for your hanging baskets or window boxes i do it the exact same way i'm just not ready to show you because i don't have the hanging baskets ready and i'll be swapping out the window box soon but what i'm going to do is hack into the three-quarter inch main line i'll punch a hole and then insert a quarter inch coupler attach a quarter inch tubing or micro tubing and what i'm going to do is run that right up the side i have it in the color white because the trim is white once i get to the top i'll come in with a quarter inch t and then i'll wrap in a circle in the hanging basket or in the window box with this quarter inch drip line this has half gallon per hour emitters spaced every six inches when it comes to overwintering i bring the entire four-way manifold and faucet drips inside then remove the end caps or plugs and drain or blow the water out of the system then replace the end caps and that's it you guys all i need to do now is to mulch over all the tubing to hide it the main takeaway that i want you guys to get from this video is there's not just one right way to do drip irrigation as long as you are getting water from point a a water source to point b your plant's roots then you are doing it right i personally love that you can customize drip irrigation to your own garden needs and to modify in the future as your garden grows maybe you added a plant which needs additional water at that point all you need to do is to add emitter or maybe you had a plant that only needed supplemental water for the first two years as it's getting established but now it doesn't need any additional water at that point you can remove the emitter and use a goof plug to plug the hole thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope that it was helpful and i'll see you guys the next one bye

Channel: Dee's Yard

Views: 32,896

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Keywords: drip irrigation, drip system, drip irrigation system, diy drip irrigation system, how to install drip irrigation system, how to install drip system in garden, drip irrigation installation, drip irrigation installation videos, drip irrigation installation guide, drip irrigation 101, drip irrigation basics, drip irrigation window boxes, drip depot installation videos, dees yard, diy irrigation system for garden, how to install drip irrigation, install drip irrigation, diy water

Id: SqPf4B9oD4U

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021