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The popularity of drip irrigation systems has brought on a boom of drip irrigation products to choose from. Individual parts can be purchased and put together for tailor made configurations to meet any number of landscapes. Kits are also offered that include all of the parts needed in one package to put a drip irrigation system in place. With taking a few measurements, the topography of your landscape, and the watering preferences of the plants involved into consideration a customized drip irrigation system can be installed in your yard within hours of starting the project. Drip irrigation products include several basic items that fit together to make a trouble free watering solution.
Soaker hoses were the first wave of low pressure slow delivery watering systems. Traditional watering methods waste too much of the expensive commodity and the plants only get a portion of the moisture applied. Drip irrigation products were developed to address these issues. Inexpensive and effective they have caught on with gardeners across the country.
The primary drip irrigation products control the water pressure, deliver and gauge how fast the water comes out of the emitters. Backflow preventers and anti-siphon valves have to meet local requirements and come in a variety of designs to meet them. Their function is to prevent contamination of the household water source. Flexible half inch main line tubing carries the water to the different areas and quarter inch branch tubing delivers it to the plant base where it is released through drippers that are set to release water at a given rate per hour. Depending on the size of the lines and the area being irrigated the rate per hour can be anywhere from half a gallon per hour to 40 gallons in situations involving mini-sprinklers or mist heads. The parts are fashioned in such a manner that no specialty tools are required to put the system together. Punching holes in the flexible plastic tubing to install the emitters is the hardest part of assembling the drip irrigation products.
Armed with the details of your topography and the names of the plants involved a trip to the nearest nursery or home improvement store can be a rewarding experience. There are complete box kits that can be purchased for different landscape scenarios or you can pick and choose from the array of individual pieces of equipment to make up a drip irrigation system specifically for your exact needs. Either way the drip irrigation products will work consistently and well for years. Making changes in the location of emitters and additions to the main line are all easy to do since the system is above ground. There is drip irrigation products available that enable you to use a sprinkler head fixture in an existing automated in ground sprinkler system to deliver water to a drip irrigation zone.
The wide variety of drip irrigation products that will address any watering need is impressive and maybe intimidating until you spend a little time to understand how they fit together to make a perfect watering solution.
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Author Bio Box: Patricia Wainwright
Get all the facts about water management and gardening articles at GreenThumbArticles.com!
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