Garden Irrigation Systems

Automatic Garden Irrigation Systems Save Water.

Garden irrigation systems are an ideal way to water your lawn and garden beds if designed to put the right amount of water only where it’s needed and at the right time of the day. Irrigation systems use PVC tubing to transport the water with various fittings, designed to water only within the boundaries of an area, avoiding wasteful over-spray.

To achieve effective watering, it is best to divide your garden into separate and distinct zones or watering areas, using the most appropriate fittings for each area. Different parts of your garden will have different watering needs. Lawn such as ‘Santa Anna’ in full Sun requires much more water than native plants and plants placed in shady garden beds.

Each of these different watering areas should be watered by having their own, separate irrigation line and is a fundamental principle of garden irrigation systems – separate lines for separate watering areas. Depending on the amount of pressure you have coming into your property from the main water supply, you may not be able to run the different areas at the same time. Some suburbs of Adelaide may not even be able to supply enough pressure to water just one of your zones if there are a high number of fittings, over a large area, so you may even have to divide one area up into two or more zones with an additional irrigation line, watering one zone at a time.

A number of manufacturers make multi-outlet taps that fit to your garden tap. These can be manually turned on, one at a time, or for more convenience, take a look at the range of electronic tap timers, available in most garden or hardware stores.

Landscape gardeners from Visual Landscape Gardening can discuss installing an automatic garden irrigation system that involves having an automatic hub connecting all of your lines to the main water supply at a central point using electric solenoid valves. You can then set the electronic controller to remember when and how long to water each of the watering areas in your garden. Automatic hubs can either be installed externally near your garden tap, or buried underground and connected directly into your water supply pipe.

After the water restrictions from the recent drought period in Adelaide, water conservation is on everyone’s mind. This does not mean you have to have nothing to water in your back garden, but with the rising cost of water supply, it should mean using water wisely. Most household water consumption is used on lawns and gardens, so installing an automatic garden irrigation system is the smartest action you can take to save water, keeping your garden looking green and healthy during the summer months whilst never again forgetting to turn a sprinkler on or off.
Programmed watering times allow you to control exactly which zones get watered and for how long, depending on the type of irrigation fittings you are using and how much water the types of plants you have planted require, dramatically reducing over watering or under watering.