After having seen how the irrigation system was functioning with the dripper fittings getting a minimum of water pressure I decided to move the dripper lines to one of the 4 way nipples, the two new gen raised beds to another nipple, the fan shell bed and washer drums to another nipple and the last nipple goes to the two old gen drum raised beds. After getting some more hose, I got that new layout taken care of. Testing the system proved successful. Everything worked perfectly with all plants getting proper irrigation. The next order of business was the starting of the 2nd tier of the irrigation system. The old refrigerator bed housing potatoes, the drum planters and even the old raised bed housing potatoes will need irrigation. This is going to involve tapping into the main water line again but instead of just using the 1/4" poly line like from the 1st system, I'm going to be using 1/2" poly line to get a large volume of water to all of the beds. With the 1/2" line in place I'll use these tap couplings that literally just poke into the hose where needed and have 1/4" hose plugged to the couplings to go to the sprinklers as needed. First order of business though is to get a tee in place and run some 1/2" poly line along the routes where I need water to go. Again, I love this plug and play shit that this irrigation system offers. With the poly lines run, the next thing was plugging the lines at their ends. This was accomplished with a poly line/PVC adapter plug with PVC pipe capped on the threaded end of the adapter. Since I didn't have any 1/2" PVC threaded caps I had to use a combination of adapter couplings and smooth caps with short pieces of PVC pipe to make defacto plugs to thread on to the poly hose/PVC adapters. Hey, whatever works right? With the poly lines run and buried under mulch, I started with the potato bed first. Again, using the tap couplings and a hose prick tool that is available with this irrigation hardware, I poked a hole in the poly line and installed a coupling. I then put two stakes with some 1/4" hose and the necessary tees for the mini sprayers to get the potato bed irrigation set up. Quick and easy. Now for the drum planters. Everything went the same as with the potato bed, with the exception that I had to link together four drum planters. Each planter got one stake and sprinkler. One tap was made in the 1/2" poly hose to feed the first drum which was then linked over to the other drums using the tees for the 1/4" hose. Again quick and easy. With the drum planters set up last thing was the tomato bed. I tapped into the one side of the tee that was feeding the drum beds using the tool and ran some 1/4" poly over to the bed, only a few feet away. I figured if the drum planters took up too much pressure or the combination of the drum planters and the tomato bed were too much for that side I would tap into the other side feeding the potato bed since that side only has two sprayers. The good thing about poking holes in the 1/2" poly is that there are actually "goof plugs" available for plugging up holes made by mistake in the 1/2" poly hose. Anyway, I tapped into the hose and ran the 1/4" hose over to the tomato bed and hooked up two sprinklers to cover the whole bed. The sprinklers have a coverage of 5 to 7 feet so that's plenty for this 4x10 bed. With the garden beds all covered, the water line hookup was next. I already dug up the water line so I had to make the sprinkler valve assembly so all I had to do was just hook it up to the water line and connect it to the poly line adapter. After cutting the PVC pipe in the ground and trimming it to give me the necessary space to put the pipe tee in, I had the sprinkler valve assembly hooked up and the poly hose adapter plugged up as well. I was able to use the manual bypass knob on the sprinkler valve to test the system, which worked beyond expectations, again. With the valve in place and the system tested, it was time to hook up the solenoids for both the first irrigation system and this current system I assembled. Since the solenoids are 24v, I can get away with some crude twisted pair wiring I have on hand. I went ahead and soldered the wires from the first solenoid to the twisted pair and covered the solder joints with heat shrink tubing. With that I did a shallow trench along the garden fence line over to the other solenoid and crimp capped the twisted pair from the first solenoid to the second unit AND the wires from the 24v power supply I had from our previous sprinkler system. With that I just plugged the power supply right to the power strip that is mounted on the hydroponic garden which is bein fed by its own timer. Since all of this stuff was in close proximity to one another, I figured I might as well capitalize on the available resource versus hooking up another power line an another timer for this system. With everything hooked up electrically and plumbing-wise, I did a test y manually cycling on the mechanical timer. Upon doing so power was sent to the solenoids and the sprinkler valves came on as intended, activating the entire irrigation system as intended. Everything got ample water. Upon checking the garden tonight I found the garden beds moist from the evening watering, showing that the system did its job superbly. When the heat of summer comes, this irrigation system will hold it down and ensure that our garden stays nice and moist regardless how hot and dry it gets.
2 Comments
2/27/2021 09:56:04 pm
Thanks for sharing, it was a great read on the Irrigation system. I have been trying Hunter Irrigation for their amazing services for irrigation purpose. You must try them.
Reply
3/2/2021 09:04:15 am
I'm going to have to look them up, all of this stuff came from Lowes but I'm always welcome to suggestions for new products. The irrigation system is just one of many baby steps towards greater automation so the homestead can be more autonomous, freeing me up to work on even more new ideas.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|