Poppy Jack recently finished up adding some sprinklers to our backyard to assist in watering the new lawn and the plants at the tree line. I asked him to pen some prose for Strewth on the subject.
Ladies and Gentleman…my father
(links added by me for additional definitions)
At home in Perth West Australia, the use of reticulation systems is common and many folk including us, sink a bore to tap into the water table, via a submersible pump. In our case we had to drill down around 30 metres to find good water. However once that’s done and pipes laid to every corner of the garden/lawn, the area can be watered automatically using a timing device which is programmed to switch between areas of the garden, after a set time. All aspects of the watering including days, times and duration of watering can be programmed. Look Mum, no hands !
Here though (ie in deepest Northern Virginia), finding the gubbins necessary to install a retic system, is not as easy as I thought it would be. You need:
- Pop up sprinklers (like this from Rain Bird)
- Polyethylene pipe (more commonly known at home, as poly pipe) to connect the pop ups
- Various elbow joints and T pieces to help with connections, and
- Tap or hose fittings
We tried a lot of the more recognizable hardware stores in the area but, though they seemed to know of the products, none of them stocked what we needed. There was also at least one company somewhere in Fairfax which did the work, but was not a DIY store.
Finally we were directed to a Lowes store in Woodbridge, which had almost everything we needed.
Without being able to adequately measure the water pressure via some form of flow test, we had to fly blind a little in relation to the maximum number of pop up sprinklers which could be operated simultaneously. I thought that six would be fine, but when I connected them all up, it was spit and dribble time. That caused massive, though brief, DIY related depression, but the next plan proved more successful and dispelled the gloom.
We created two stations with three pop ups in each and that worked, but it meant connecting the hose to one end for a period of watering, before disconnecting that station and re-connecting to the next array of three pop ups. Tedious, but it does work and saves major time when you want a garden, but don’t always have the time to invest in hand watering.
-PJ.
Thanks Dad!
