Irrigation, Probably a crazy idea but......

[Clueless 1]

My wife would like me to set up something to water her flower beds / pots (pots are in the flower beds).

There are 5 flower beds I'm trying to water - a 12' 1/4 circle, two that are 3x15' and two that are 3x30'. Thinking of using a 12' 1/4 circle for the one flower bed (1.30 gpm), 2 x end side strip spray (0.49gpm each) and 2 x side strip spray (1.21gpm each) - for a total of 4.7gpm.

My thought is to run poly irrigation tubing from my house spigot / faucet and run it manually. (I would use an anti siphon valve and a short ~ 2' piece of regular yard hose to connect the poly tubing to the faucet.)

I have 3/4" copper service coming into my house and it T's to my water softener (for inside water) and directly to the outside faucet. The water meter is also 3/4" copper.

The layout would look like:


faucet ----- 37' ----- "T" splitter

going left out of splitter |----- 30' ----- o -------- 40' -------- o --- 9' --- o
going right out of splitter |----- 29' ----- o ---------34'--------- o


Hopefully the formatting turns out : ) (ok formatting didn't work out - redoing it) Basically, 37' of tube to a "T" splitter - then on one run 30' more to the first sprinkler then 40' to the second one then 9' to the last one. On the second run 29' off the "T" to the sprinkler head and then 34' to the last one.

Each of the sprinkler heads will be elevated 36" so it will water the flowers and the flower pots in each of the gardens.

I don't know what my pressure is coming out of the faucet nor do I know the gpm. The gpm I can try measuring with a 5 gallon bucket if needed. We seem to have excellent water pressure.

I'm guessing that the sprinkler heads I choose use so little water that I'm hopeful I can run them all as one "zone." I've read about sizing the tubing, velocity, pressure loss, friction, pipe knocking, pipe scrubbing, etc. - I'm very confused, can't figure out the calculations and am now nervous I might wreck my home's plumbing by messing around with this project.

Can I use 1" poly irrigation tubing for all ~ 180' needed?

Any other thoughts?

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

 

[Valveman]

Poly pipe is fine. It won't effect your house plumbing unless you are using all the water you can get for irrigation.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

for a total of 4.7gpm.

I wonder if you can get that much water out of the spigot while having sufficient pressure at the spray heads. Try seeing how long it takes to fill a 5 gallon bucket with an open-end garden hose. The (300/(number of seconds) ) is the GPM. I am thinking your spray heads could maybe use half of that gpm. I have no irrigation experience.

Your water pressure from the city will be part of it.

 

[WorthFlorida]

Try considering using drip irrigation for small areas. There is 1/2 drip and micro drip. 1/2"is good for shrubbery, large flower beds with good pressure. Micro is good for potted plants but you need to take more care of micro but it uses very little water compared to pop up or rotor heads. My preference now is the Hunter MP rotors that are used with pop up sprinklers. You get the best of both words with very little misting of water that turns to fog and blows away before hitting the ground. It reduces a lot of run off and wasted water. Rainbird has there own version but the Hunter allows adjusting the distance by closing off the water at the spray head.