drip irrigation

[touchofgrey]

I posted this question on another forum but didn't get much response so i thought I'd try here.

Wondering if anyone has had good (or bad) experience with drip irrigation? I'm really lazy and take off for a few days sometimes so I was thinking that drip might be a way to automate the watering process. I've got an elevated chamber in my cabinet that was designed to hold the reservoir when I was running hydro and thought I could easily convert it to feed a simple gravity drip system. To test the idea I took the 8 gallon reservoir and hooked up a drip emitter with about 1' of elevation difference and it seemed to be dripping at about 1/gal per hour.



The round dial on the side is a on/off valve that can also be used to fine tune the flow rate. I'm wondering if drip will uniformly wet the root zone or not. Any thoughts or experience? To control the watering cycles I am looking at a battery operated hose bibb timer. http://www.sprinklerwarehouse.com/90...g-p/9001ez.htm

 

[touchofgrey]

Nada, eh? Woulda thought that would have been done alot.

Well anyway I bought the timer, ran some lines and hooked it up. Seems to work just fine. I'll watch it run for a few days and let you know how it does.

 

[ScrubNinja]

I'm pretty sure on my garden timer sorta like yours it mentioned you need a 2ft head. Maybe check how the valve works when there is little water in the res?

 

[touchofgrey]

This is what I ended up with. http://www.irrigationdirect.com/products/db.asp?id=DD-HEDT
I read the specs of other models and saw they said needed 10 psi to operate so I emailed customer service and asked if they would work with < 1 psi. The Irrigation Direct people confirmed their valve was totally mechanical and didn't require any pressure. When it came I see it's basically a motorized ball valve. I am concerned about potential reduced flow when the rez gets low and the head pressuure is low. I can hold 8 gallons but to test the system I put in 2 gallons and it seems to work great. Here's a picture of the system in action on the trial run
.

 

[stoned teacher]

I've used drip in coco and loved it...building a new setup and will incorporate drip into it....

I use the Raindrip stuff with these drippers http://www.bghydro.com/BGH/Itemdesc.asp?ic=HPMDB&eq=&Tp=

in a gravity watering setup....simple n easy!

 

[El Vexilix]

I feel that if your doing soil , drip irrigation is the way to go . Waters the soil properly . Any other watering method wastes water and never gets the soil completely wet. Im working with drip tubing right now and would like to get the porous tubing from Lowes cause theirs look more efficient the depot's on the clogging issue .I haven't had any clogs yet by the drip-tubing running compost tea. Wasted lots of time and water and buds not doing drip.