Rural Irrigation/Remote Faucets Methods ??

I have a vacation property in the mountains, of about six acres, two acres of which are cleared and developed. I have areas away from the house area in which I need water access for watering plants, flowers, etc. Ideally, I would love to have about three faucets in areas that are up to about 400 feet away from the house.

I can purchase 500 to 600 feet of hoses, and with the use of "T's" add several branches (hoses) to allow me to water in several selected areas. But, if I use high quality hoses, this would be pretty expensive, and it all seems so "temporary."

I am wondering if it would be more economical to run a main line of about

500 feet, using some sort of plastic pipe (cannot remember the name of the current most common), and then run my hose branches from that ? (The main line would have to lay on the ground, through the woods). Whatever I use, I need to be able to drain the line during winters, but I suppose I could get fittings for this equipped with a drain screw or valve or something.

Any ideas of what I should look for, or use ? Any general ideas of how to accomplish what I am trying to do ?

thanks !!

James

Reply to
James Nipper
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Poly pipe is great for underground lines. It doesn't lay flat very well so I'm not sure how it would work above ground. Here's a link:

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Reply to
RBM

You don't say where this water is coming from. Is it town water, well water, what?

If you are laying pipe then poly pipe is what you need, it will be the cheapest choice for such a distance. All the fittings you would ever want are available. It can be laid underground if the ground isn't too rocky. The quickest method is with a ripper/feeder on a tractor. This is a blade that cuts a slit trench that has a metal tube behind it, you feed the poly down the tube into the slit as the tractor moves at walking pace, then you tred the slit down and it's done.

OTOH it can also be laid along fences on top of the ground. If going to this much trouble don't do it in 12mm (1/2 inch pipe) but somewhere around

32mm (1 1/4 ") to 40mm (1 1/2 "). This solution depends on what is pumping the water and how much rise or fall there is along the length. The joints in polypipe are easily undone to allow draining by gravity, ground slope permitting.

A quite different solution: what about saving water adjacent to the area that you want to water? I am thinking of a tank collecting water from the roof of an outbuilding or a small dam/pond in a gully.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

I wonder if you could find some used hand move sprinkler line. The stuff I'm thinking of is 4" aluminum and has a coupler for a sprinkler at each joint. It usually came in 30' or 40' sections. You could just pull it apart to drain it or put a valve at a joint now and then. One drawback might be its temptation to thieves.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

I don't know what country you're in but I use polypipe to take water all over the place and since a lot of it has now been in place for up to 20 years, I don't consider it to be temporary.

I use 2 inch, 1 inch and three quarter inch. Very little of this is laid underground except for perhaps 20 ft of the 2 inch stuff that forms a main artery. Some of the 1 inch and three quarters of an inch stuff has become covered over the eyars as drebris drops on top of it. I have a main 2 inch line coming from our big tank (cistern in USian) and then I run one inch and

3/4 inch withint the veg garden and in the orchard and down to the chook pen and also from another 2 inch pipe down at the pond at the bottom of the garden.

Lay it out on a hot summers day when the sun helps it to lie out better and carry some hot water to do all the connections and it's an easy job. One hint would be that if you manage to find little sprinkler heads that you like, buy a truck load. I am reduced to 2 heads of my favourites.

Reply to
FarmI

Good Lord. That stuff would now have antique value wouldn't it Dean?

Reply to
FarmI

you could use PEX or PVC, but both are weakened by long term exposure to UV (sun) So you'd have to paint them with some light colored exterior latex after laying them out. I'd suspect they'd give you 5 or 6 years service without paint. (my experience) then they start to get brittle.

Reply to
Steve Barker

Agree with the above. For what he wants to do, 1" poly pipe should work. It's readily available at HD, Lowes, plumbing supply, online, etc. and reasonably priced.

Reply to
Chet

Why not? Hose length has no bearing on water volume, only diameter matters.

Reply to
Brooklyn1

That's what I do during dry spells, hitch my Agra-Fab cart to a tractor and haul water in a poly tank or in a couple dozen 5 gallon contractor buckets filled about 3/4s... only takes about a minute to fill each bucket if I remove the nozzle from my 5/8" garden hose. I rarely use the poly tank, the buckets are easier as I can more easily guage how much water each plant gets (1 bucket is usually sufficient). I water newly planted saplings and shrubs during dry spells, maybe 2-3 times a season as most years there's plenty of rain. I think it's actually mentally retarded to build an irrigation system as the OP, etal indicate unless it's a fairly arid clime or for a plant nursery business or someone has more dollars than brain cells. Plastic buckets are cheap, usually free... just got three more buckets today taht's be ready to go once I empty the cat litter... I have more than I can count and they nest so take very little room. If you drill a

3/16" hole on the side near the bottom of the bucket it will drip water for a plant for several hours.
Reply to
Brooklyn1

I agree that poly pipe is the least expensive course of action. 500 foot of

3/4" is only about $65 at this site:
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Pex would cost a lot more. Your local prices might vary a bit but should still be well under a hundred.

I don't have a clue as to the UV effect on poly pipe. Buried it lasts for a very long time. A water line I installed in 1969 is still in use today.

Reply to
Colbyt

A warning to all, Brooklyn1 has a habit of making confident pronouncements that are wrong.

The friction and hence head loss depends on both the length and diameter (and the number of fittings and joins and the change in level). Particularly in a thin pipe a long run (say 500ft) will have greater head loss than a short one (say 50ft) using the same source. The difference is less noticeable on large diameter pipe.

If you want to do the sums yourself see here:

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David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

You had better put down that sudz.. you don't know the difference between pressure and volume.

Reply to
Brooklyn1

I've never heard of anyone collecting it. Old tractors and farm equipment , old cars and barb wire, yes. A former co worker told me people collect the insulators used on the old overhead phone lines. The scrap value of used aluminum pipe might be pretty high. Many farmers in my area went to pivot irrigation so scrapped their irrigation pipe. No one much cared for hand move sprinkler line. It was just too labor intensive. My Dad had some. He also had "volunteers" to help move it.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman

I have black polypipe that's been in the sunlight for up to 20 years. The biggest danger to my black polypipe has been from my garden fork and frost popping the connectors off.

Reply to
FarmI

Ah! Thank you for mentioning it. Given all the other posts where there has been no mention of black polypipe except for a very early post, but some other things I've never heard of and UV, I was beginning to wonder if black polypipe hadn't made it to US.

Reply to
FarmI

LOL.

Reply to
FarmI

Nah, neither have I, but farmers tend to get attached to stuff that's been sitting in their PUS pile for years and the value increases in leaps and bounds when someone else might want it.

Old tractors and

:-)) I have a few of those. I also have a few old rabbit traps that I've foudn round the paddocks over time.

You didn't step back fast enough did you ;-))

Reply to
FarmI

Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, 2 inch black poly pipe is what my father used to get water from our spring's pump house to the water system at our home on the farm. We had to make sure the buried pipe was in a bed of sand because 200 yards of plastic pipe will move when pressurized. On more than one occasion a small stone would rub a hole into the pipe so we had to dig it up, patch the pipe with a plastic coupling then rebury it with sand around it. I remember the pipe as having a fairly thick wall and not being very flexible.

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

Black HDPE pipe containing 2 to 2.5% carbon black can be safely stored outside in the sun without damage from UV exposure. source:

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Some poly pipe can take it and some apparently can not.

Reply to
Colbyt

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