Spring is coming on and the weather is slowly warming. I think it will be nice not to have to deal with the seemingly never-ending winter/spring drizzle that is typical west of the Cascades. I spent some time this weekend setting up drip irrigation system for my garden. This was a bit of a dry run... (ba dum duh)... I haven't fertilized the garden area yet, so I can't set up the whole system right now. But I wanted to see how it would work, and if there were any problems. I was a little concerned about the efficacy of the drip tape I purchased on the loamy sand soil of our garden site. I wanted to know if the water would spread laterally enough to germinate seeds. Albert at the local irrigation store hooked me up with my drip supplies. I bought Toro 15mil drip tape, 12" emitter spacing, .32gph. I could potentially use this for more than one year, but we'll see how much abuse it takes over the season. A 8" spacing would probably be better on the sandy soil, as would a higher flow rate, but I think this will work. In the picture below you can see the hydrant, and below that I've got a Y-splitter (so I can run a hose as well as my drip irrigation); a 20 psi pressure reducer, a 150 mesh filter, and a hose.
From the hose we go to a blue low-pressure 2" distribution hose (also called a lay-flat). Then we go into 1/4" 'spaghetti tubing', which barbs into the drip tape. It was pretty cheap to set-up, as drip irrigation goes.
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