Garden watering system

[mheden]

Despite the title this is mainly a 'plumbing' question...

I'm trying to put together a low-cost simple garden watering system that I can bury a couple of inches under the soil. Gardena and Hozelock both do watering systems, but the delicate drippers and sprayers are prone to blocking, are fiddly to set-up and have to be above ground where they would be vulnerable to attack by my rotary mower. They're also fairly expensive. I'd prefer to lash-up a home built system using 15mm and 22mm plastic pipe to feed lengths of 'soaker' hose, all of which could be safely buried out of harms way.

Has anyone already done this? Would you recommend Hep2O for shallow burial, or would I need to use the blue (MDPE?) pipe instead. Has anyone found a plumbing connector that would be suitable for joining 15 or 22mm plastic pipe to short lengths of 'soaker' hose? I haven't bought any samples for testing yet, but soaker hose *might* be the right sort of size to jam over 15mm pipe. Alternatively, maybe it will accept one of those reinforcing inserts and fit a Speefit or Hep2O connector :-) Either way, I'm reluctant to use something like jubilee clips because they'll rust away very quickly. To get round the problems of freezing in winter, I'd probably blow air through the system at the end of the season to push most of the water out.

Anyone had a go at this?

Mike

[Guy King]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

Yes. I did it for my Mum some years ago. Leaky hose where needed, joined with ordinary hosepipe where not. For specific spot waterers, used microtube just pushed into the leaky hose, with another bit crossways on the end. It even filled the birdbath under the pear tree and did the hanging baskets.

A word of caution though - try to plan the layout as a series of radial circuits rather than daisychain style, otherwise the pressure drop at the far end will get the better of you. If need be, use a larger bore to distribute to soakers where needed.

[Mike Barnes]

Yes, but only as a temporary (three years) measure while plants were getting established in a new bed.

I used ordinary green hose pipe, and as I wasn't overly bothered about appearance a lot of it ended up on the surface.

With ordinary hose I used plastic push-fit connectors of the sort used in those expensive Hoselock/Gardena systems you mentioned earlier.

I used stainless jubilee clips, which survived just fine.

I didn't bother flushing for winter and the system came to no harm. It was all flexible enough to cope.

Soaker hoses need good pressure, and with a large area to cover, I found it necessary to run several systems each with their own timer, programmed to come on at different times of day.

[Mary Fisher]

Ours has been in for four (I think, could be longer) years and we've never done anything to prevent freezing - in Yorkshire.

We;;ve found that our soaker hose works well by being fed only from a water butt, which is about a foot higher than the lowest point of the soaker hose (in the greenhouse). It's worked perfectly and has been a boon.

Everything really does depend, I suspect, on the area which will be demanding watering but a well thought out system will be a godsend.

Mary

[Dan delaMare-Lyon]

We've got a complete garden watering system comprising normal green garden hose which I have punctured with a stanley knofe point buried in the ground joined to the porous seep hose for the sections where more constant watering is required. Use the cheap hozelock rip off conncetors for the hardware stores - £0.50 each vs about 4 quid for Hozelock.

Been in the ground 5 years - works a treat!

Cheers Dan.