A sprinkler installation can bring you a lot of comforts and a more uniform and efficient water distribution. It will start up when we indicate through the programmer and consume the right amount of water, assuming a lower cost. For these reasons, it is not surprising that it is worthwhile to implement it in a garden or plot.
The installation process is not excessively complicated, although it requires a certain amount of skill, so whether you do it yourself or hire a specialist, you should know how to do it.
It is always good to know how this type of sprinkler irrigation system works because that knowledge will help you solve the ordinary circumstances that may arise once it is in operation, right? Without further ado, let’s see how to do it so you can enjoy its advantages.
The following is a plan of the garden, if possible, to scale. This plan should include the following points:
- Watering programmer. The place where we place it must be protected from the weather and provided with electricity.
- Watering head.
- Areas to be watered, including lawn, trees, shrubs, etc.
- The riverbed where we will distribute the pipes.
Sprinklers and diffusers. Without forgetting the maximum number of sprinklers that we can use per line and that we have calculated previously, we determine their situation taking into account that the radius of the range must overlap so that any part is watered by at least two sprinklers or diffusers so that there is as uniform a distribution of water as possible, and taking care that walls and other delicate points do not get wet.
The logical thing would be to place emitters in the corners and other points of the perimeter and some central regions, depending on the plot’s shape and extent. We can do this “by eye” or want the planning to be perfect by tracing with a compass on the scale map.
We already have everything planned. Now we can buy the right amount of primary elements (meters of pipe, electro valves, emitters, and programmers) that will compose our automatic home irrigation and get ready to assemble the structure. However, it will be necessary to add some accessories that will depend on our installation’s characteristics, and that we will see in the second part of this post dedicated to the assembly of the components.
Once we have them all in our hands, we will get to work; we must do ten tasks to complete our installation:
- Mark the route that will have the pipes distributed throughout the plot, using strings or marking on the ground.
- Dig the trenches through which the pipes will run if our installation is buried (the usual in case of sprinkler irrigation). These should be approximately 20 to 30 centimeters deep, depending on the pipes’ diameter and the height of the emitters we are going to use.
- Throw a pipe from the water intake to the place where we will place the irrigation head.
- Assemble the irrigation head, connect it to the pipe coming from the water intake, and place it in the box if the installation is buried.
- Distribute the pipe through the open trenches from the head to the different points where the water has to arrive.
- Place the irrigation emitters of each zone. In our case, most of them will be pop-up turbine sprinklers and some diffusers.
- Make the electrical connection from the programmer to the electro valves.
- Check that everything is working correctly and adjust the watering angles of the sprinklers.
- Once we are sure that there are no water leaks, we cover the trench by burying the pipe.
Good! Now all you have to do is program the watering. We hope you have everything clear up here; the next step will be to start sweating and carry out the different elements’ assembly to let your sprinkler installation work.