Irrigation system - well water and rust removal

[Rwbil]

Looking for some advice with anyone with experience in this area.

Here is my situation. My lawn is not looking to great and I am trying to figure out the best option on how to automatically water my lawn. I plan to install an irrigation system.

Some basic information first. Yard is mostly St. Augustine grass. I might have to till and sod but I sure am not going to do that until I have an automatic irrigation system. I live in Northeast Florida and the soil is mostly sand. My first goal is just to water the front lawn and my front lawn is around 3000 square feet and from what I have read it needs 1” of water a week. In my city you can only legally water 2 days per week. So I calculate it would need 1860 gallons of water a week. But there is tremendous loss when using a sprinkler system so it actually would need considerably more water to achieve that 1” watering goal. I should add for my bushes and plants I have already installed drip irrigation. So I am trying to figure out the best option to automatically water my lawn without spending thousands on an iron filtration system:

1) Use City Water - The problem is city water where here is very expensive as they charge more than twice the water bill for sewer, so I estimate it would be well over $100 to water the front and if I eventually wanted to water the back yard I would be looking at $300 a month.


2) Have City Install a separate Irrigation Meter - The cost would be over $1,000 for the city to just connect to the city water and install the meter and then they charge a minimum water fee even if you use no water that month. Would take years to recoup my investment and it is still an expensive option.



3) Use my Well Water - This is the option I am most interested in. I have a shallow well and the rust is bad. I ordered off a kit to see exactly the amount of rust, but there is a neighbor that uses there well and there is rust everywhere. Now if I go with the well water there are several options:


a. Sub surface - This option seems interesting as it uses less water and I would not have to worry about the rust issue, or at least I think it would not be an issue. But it is hard to find a lot of good information on Sub Surface irrigation. I see some sites that talk about it providing uneven watering so you ended up with patchy looking grass. Also I worry about sediment clogging up the emitters and then having to dig up the yard again to fix it. This option would be the most difficult to install, but if it actually worked perfectly would be the least expensive option.


b. Chemical Iron Remover System - I see the SprinkleRite system, but wonder how well that would work, how long it would last outside in Florida Summers and how much chemical I would have to add to remove the rust. This might be the simplest and not too expensive option to try and see what happens.


c. Iron Filtration System – This would be the most interesting option if I could find a reasonable priced system. If I could find one with a backwash and filter material that last a long time. So far what I have seen is all over $1000 and most costing thousands. Is there any sub $1000 Models that work well?


d. A natural iron aeration filtration system - Again this is one that is hard to find a lot of information on and how to build it. It is not even clear to me how I would control the well pump to pump the water into the storage tank and I am not going to have some huge tank. So the goal here would be for the well water to pump water into the storage tank and mix with oxygen to allow rust to form and fall to the bottom. I am just not sure if this would work and how much rust it would remove. I have to put out at least 2000 gallons of water a week and the flow rate cannot be so slow my well pump is cycling. Let’s say I had a 50 gallon storage tank. Would the rust from the well water be removed fast enough to keep up with the irrigation needs. This sounds like an inexpensive natural fix but I am not sure it would actually work.

 

[WorthFlorida]

You have a lot going on here but I'll answer a few of them. Use the old KISS formula.

• For one, get a new well drilled. The well guys will know how deep to go to get past the iron water. South Florida is past 48' usually about 70 plus feet. Not sure about Central Florida. In S.FL that deep well become sulfur water. Yes it stinks but I used it to chase the kids away and they don't hang around.
• The cost to set up a iron removal system, the chemical injection system available at HD (as you found now called SprinkleRite) it gets expensive. @ $10 per gallon and you'll need a few gallons per month. This is what is stated from the specification, "so that rust stains are less likely to form". It also becomes a maintenance item, the tank needs occasional cleaning and the sun's UV rays beats it up after a few years.
• An iron filtration system is also expensive (sodium permanganate) but probably will not handle the flow rate you'll need but excellent for domestic water.
• City water meter usually only charges the sewer rate up to 10,000 gallons per month, after that its water use only. For those with a 20,000 gallon swimming pool to fill up doesn't hurt as much.
• Just note even with your own well, water restrictions are still enforced. When I have too I'll run the irrigation twice a day. Before the morning cutoff time (10am) and after the afternoon time (4PM). Don't get caught up with watering guidelines from authors up north. They insist on deep water and less per week. It's true for black soil and regular grass roots that grow deep. Our sandy soil and St Augustine is a shallow root system. Over watering causes too much run off onto the walkways and street and is especially bad after fertilizing as this runoff gets into the drainage system that feeds our man made lake and canals.

My suggestion is a new deep well with no iron in the water, an irrigation pump ( if the hydrostatic pressure brings the ground water up above 20 feet, and at least 2 HP with your size yard. With WiFi controllers available you can remotely operate the irrigation when you need to override the programmed times when the weather swings one way or the other.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Rwbil]

@WorthFlorida,

I wish it was that easy. If I could spend a thousand dollars and get a new well drilled that had no rust I would do that in a heartbeat. First I actually have 2 wells; a rock well that goes down about 60 feet and a shallow well. The original Rock Well's water also had a high iron content and it was leaking to the point I got a lot of sand in, which is why I built the shallow well. I called a well drilling company and they said the only way to get no rust on the everything is drill to the Aquifer which is 600' down and would cost around $7,000. I can buy a lot of water for $7,000. Not sure it would be a good investment. The well driller also did not like any of my other ideas. He says the Iron Filtration will not keep up with irrigation unless you run like 2 sprinkler heads or spend a fortune on multiple Iron Filtration Systems. And he said they had nothing but problems with the chemical thing so they stopped selling them.

I might be wrong but as for water bill my understanding is they actually charge you more per gallon after you hit a certain amount of water usage. In fact here is a link. This must be the only business in the world that charges you more when you buy more.

https://www.jea.com/my_account/rates/

 

[Reach4]

but there is a neighbor that uses there well and there is rust everywhere.

I doubt that you see rust on the grass. I suspect you only see rust on the pavement and house.

What if you did one of these?

• water the perimeter of the yard with city water, and water the part more interior to the grassy area with well water
• Tint your concrete with a color that will not show rust.

 

[Rwbil]

I doubt that you see rust on the grass. I suspect you only see rust on the pavement and house.

What if you did one of these?

• water the perimeter of the yard with city water, and water the part more interior to the grassy area with well water
• Tint your concrete with a color that will not show rust.

I already have a drip irrigation installed that waters the shrubs and plants next to my house, but there is a walkway down the center of my yard. Trying to mix 2 different systems with different Pressures and GPM flow and try and get even water distribution I think would be tough not to mention the complexity with all the additional piping as well as dealing with major overlap. And still have wind that will blow the water onto the concrete. Plus I can see the rust in the back but there is just dirt there so maybe if there was grass you would not see the rust.

If it was completely different areas like the shrubs against the house that would work but I don't see trying to run city water around all the concrete and street and then well water everywhere else and making that work.

 

[Valveman]

Running two different systems with different pressures and GPM flow is not a problem with a CSV and a pressure regulator on the drip lines.

Also Worth, what Wifi controllers are you using?

 

[Rwbil]

Running two different systems with different pressures and GPM flow is not a problem with a CSV and a pressure regulator on the drip lines.

Also Worth, what Wifi controllers are you using?

I just don't see this as a practical solution, maybe I am wrong. First in my front yard I already irrigate the plants by the house using drip irrigation, so that makes sense. But lets take the backyard for a second. I have sheds, a swimming pool, the house, and fencing all along the property. So my goal is not to use a lot of city water, so I would run a perimeter line around all those objects, but I don't want the sprinkler to shoot very far as then I am just wasting city water. So I get a sprinkler head that shoots lets say 1 foot. So now I need lots and lots of Sprinkler heads? I could run some type of above ground weep line but that looks ugly and I have to mow the yard. So now in addition to maintaining all these short distance city water sprinklers I would be installing well water sprinklers a foot away for the perimeter. Of course it is not even that easy as the pool is kidney shape and other things are not rectangular. And not to mention the wind. I just don't see this as a solution.

 

[Valveman]

Maybe I don't understand what you are trying to do? But a CSV on the pump would hold say 50 PSI constant on the sprinklers, no matter the size or number of sprinklers. Then the line that goes to the drip system can have a pressure reducer giving the drip 10-15 PSI as needed, which would also have varied flow down to 1 GPM form the CSV. You could also set the CSV as low as 15 PSI if you don't want the sprinklers shooting very far, or use pressure compensating zone valves.

 

[Reach4]

Maybe I don't understand what you are trying to do?

He has free well water that makes rust stains on concrete. If he used city water around the concrete, and well water away from the concrete, he could use expensive water around concrete, and free water for grass away from edges.

He points out that that would be hard to implement, and then the wind could still mess up the implementation.

 

[Rwbil]

Maybe I don't understand what you are trying to do? But a CSV on the pump would hold say 50 PSI constant on the sprinklers, no matter the size or number of sprinklers. Then the line that goes to the drip system can have a pressure reducer giving the drip 10-15 PSI as needed, which would also have varied flow down to 1 GPM form the CSV. You could also set the CSV as low as 15 PSI if you don't want the sprinklers shooting very far, or use pressure compensating zone valves.

The only drip edges I have is around my shrubs by the house. I went out and looked at my yard and I just don't see this as practical. I would have to write a long response to cover all the issues, but even the distance between my swimming pool and fence I would have to basically use city water. I mean trying to shoot short distance with city water and then back filling a relatively small area with well water and install sprinklers so it does not hit the pool or fence. The amount of time to install and then maintains such a system. I just don't see it. I think it would be a nightmare system and I rather pay to have an irrigation meter installed before I spent all the time to try and implement such a system.

The only way this makes sense to me is like I said around the house where I do use city water to drip irrigate my plants. I could continue to do that.

If someone actually implemented a method like this let me know how it went.

 

[Valveman]

I have seen people use "bubblers" in the yard. That way the yard is flood irrigated instead of sprinklers and it doesn't spray rust on the fence and house. You might be able to afford city water for the drip, but it will be expensive for the sprinklers.

 

[Rwbil]

I have seen people use "bubblers" in the yard. That way the yard is flood irrigated instead of sprinklers and it doesn't spray rust on the fence and house. You might be able to afford city water for the drip, but it will be expensive for the sprinklers.

I have bubblers as part of my drip irrigation for plants. And it 100% makes sense in certain areas. I have never seen anyone use bubblers to water their entire lawn, but maybe someone does. Again I cannot see mixing well and city water for my entire lawn to stop rust. I think it would be a nightmare. If anyone has any links to a youtube video showing where someone has actually used a combination of city and well water to water their lawn not garden areas to eliminate rust I would like to see it.

 

[WorthFlorida]

RWBIL: I've bought a few books from IFAS bookstore and one of them was on Florida turf grass. On their web site there is a lot of good information. Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at UF directs the cooperative extensions throughout the state of Florida. I took a few class sessions at the co-op in West Palm Beach to get a Limited Herbicide and Insecticide Certificate and one on Best Management Practices needed to get the state fertilizer application certificate. The BMP is the state standard on the control of water and chemical applications for agriculture and residential use. They are a good source to contact or stop by at their local facility. Everyone was always eager to help. Since you have figured the amount of water you may already be familiar with their resources.

https://bmp.ifas.ufl.edu/
https://ifas.ufl.edu/search-result/?q=florida+grasses
http://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/care/irrigation/