Have you looked into the soaker hoses that don't require separate emitters? Locally they are $8 for 50 feet, but I imagine much cheaper in bulk.

Some websites will tell you that you need a pressure reducer, but my experience is that the reducer doesn't reduce /enough/, and it's better to just use a simple valve to control pressure.

I have 70 foot runs... from my experience soaker hoses let out water unevenly, soaking the first few feet and droughting the last few feet... What's wrong with drip tape?

Thanks
Joe

What's wrong with drip tape? Nothing other than the cost of setting up the system. But I will say you can find less expensive sources. Check FarmTek, DripWorks, and IrrigationDirect. Down here even Lowes and Home Depot carry it and save shipping costs.

But if you have especially hard water then the system will require careful maintaining and regular cleaning.

Soaker hose have the advantage of much less cost, easier replacement, and more flexibility in the layout as the drip tape spacing imposes some limitations on the planting layout.

If cost is no concern and your water isn't especially hard.and you can live with the limited flexibility then the drip system will provide you with a great system.

However 70' runs with either approach has some pressure loss and even delivery problems without inline pressure regulators.

All that said then yes, IME drip tape will work for several years with care, under the mulch so protected from weather, no rats or mice, no sharp tools or wire cages near it. :)

Dave

Dave:

This is exactly what I was looking for thanks.. I will check out farmtek and the others.. From my finding drip tape is much cheaper than soaker hoses,etc. That is why I am going with it. I plan on putting water filters on, not concerned with hard water.. The 15 mil i was interested in states that it is made for small animals!! Not sure how true that is.. That's why i would like a company to stand behind their product... Yes, mulch is a must! Have winter rye growing for that purpose...

Thanks,

Joe

I think that since the Consumer Reports work on tainted water from plastic hoses and drip tapes, soaker hoses are preferred for edibles because they are rubber.

There are several solutions out there, but last year I put in a drip line system into my garden. 20 beds at 10 feet long each and usually three hoses per row. Cost was only a couple hundred dollars. I also had to run an underground line about 100 ft from the house to the garden. I used http://www.dripworksusa.com/ and found everything very reasonable. I just ran the 1/2 hose everywhere, split a few times with the drip lines coming out. Set on a timer this worked great last season. Basically, you can get one of their kits with filter, pressure gauge etc and then get any extra line and hose you need.

My longest runs with soaker hoses are currently about 80 feet. They water evenly for me.

I do set the pressure carefully with a cheap inline valve at the start of the soaker hose. It takes a few minutes of trial and error to get it exactly right, so that the watering is even through the length of the hose. For very long runs I sometimes loop the last 5 feet back around, so that tail end area gets double.

If you are getting too much water at the start of the hose and/or too little at the end, you could check these:

- Are you watering for enough time? It can take 5 or 10 minutes for water to reach the end of a long soaker after you turn it on. I usually do a deep soak (2-3 hours) once a month for established trees and shrubs. Shorter, more frequent waterings for new plants. We don't get summer rain.

- Is there a leak where the soaker screws onto the supply hose? Is the hose washer present and flexible (not hardened with age)?

- Is the water spraying up into the air more than 4-6 inches at any point? If so, this means the hose was turned too high at some point in the past, and is now damaged. If you need even watering, replace it with a new one. You can still use the damaged one in an area where slightly uneven water is ok -- for example, large shrubs or trees, with their big root systems.

Planatus:

I am all for being safe.. I understand plastic is no good... But the whole reason I stray away from soaker hoses is everytime I glance at one at the store it has the "cancer warning",etc.. Nothing is good to use nowadays... I wanted a drip system because the water does not come in contact with the foliage... Even tho I have water filters, as you brought up it is the drip hose itself... The foliage is my main concern... The root vegetables well still come in contact, but i think they could chelate any harmful substances, if you will..

Thanks
Joe

What? What is this cancer warning? I have not seen it.

It might just be a particular brand or just crazy coincidence that's several stores had the same product not sure... You know " been tested in the state if California for carcinogens, etc"... Think it was lead or something... That been said, I'm sure if you look you can find "healthier" choices for any irrigation... I am looking for the overall best.. And soaker hoses seems way to expensive for my liking... Also heard many bad reviews....

This link has a list of "safe" hoses including soaker hoses.

Here is a link that might be useful: safe garden plastics etc

The thing about soaker hoses is they are very cheap but they have a high possibility for user error. What works for me is to forbid anyone except me from touching the faucets they are attached to ;).

(This is basically the TL;DR version of my above post.)

Thanks for the warning about health and plastics!

Can I have some links of cheap soaker hoses... I find them very expensive compared to drip tape. I can get drip tape for 5 cents a foot. Thanks for the link to safe hoses....
Thanks,
Joe

I've used drip tape in both vegetable research and my garden for many years and find it to perform extremely well. For the money it is definitely the best deal, a roll lasts me several years and I put it down new every year as I install it about 4" deep in the soil.

T-tape, just one brand of drip tape will deliver very evenly for 1000 feet and more, the commercial veggie fields in FL are irrigated with tape and have even longer runs so, don't think a few hundred feet is going to be a problem unless your water source can't meet the demand.

As far as maintaining proper pressure in the tapes (very important for flow uniformity and not blowing them up) one only needs to know 2 things. 1) the tape flow rating and how many total feet will be operating at a time. With that you select the pressure regulator that maintains the flow at the tapes' rated pressure. I.E. a tape is rated to deliver 0.5 gph per 100 ft @ 15 psi and you are going to install one of those tapes in a 100 ft bed, you are set. Four 25' pieces would do the same thing and require the same regulator.

Needless to say it requires a little homework to set up before you order parts. It takes trial and error to determine which emitter flow rating and spacing works best on your soil, I use 1'spacing and a low flow rate (too tired to get up and look) due to my clay soil's inability to soak up water too fast.

From what I've seen of soaker hoses, they really stink at delivering water evenly over the entire length once they start getting more than about 10 ft. long but, I'm picky :)) Properly used and designed, drip tape systems are far superior to soaker hoses.

Oh, BTW, I've ordered from Irrigation Direct before and would do so again, they have a very comprehensive inventory of supplies and everything and more than I've ever wanted. The stuff I've gotten from them has performed fine and dandy too.

Mike:

I appreciate you advice... It confirms what i thought... Do you find any clogs when burying the drip tape? Why don't reuse it? I heard the same tape last for several years? Now with the spacing of the emmiters, I was thinking the closer the better to water the whole bed evenly, I understand weeds,etc, but I am doing square foot intensive gardening and I'm packing in my plants... I need the whole strip of tape to water like a soaker hose, if you will.. What would you go with? 8in or 12pm emitter spacing?

Thanks
Joe

From what you relate, Joe, why not go with a closer outlet spacing on the driptape, like 8 - 12". Go closer for sandy soils; little wider for clay soils. Aqua-Traxx offers a wide variety to choose from. Depending on your water quality you may not have clogging but I too replace tape every year. I reuse the header line (1.5" layflat) to which I have attached the garden hose adapter fittings and end cap plug (these available at any hardware store) and punch-in the barb tape loc fittings to attach drip tape for each row. All of the latter can be reused many years.
I'd also suggest you order a few tape loc couplings. These come in handy when a mouse chews the line or you puncture it by mistake. They vary in price between $.40 and $1.50 each but I prefer the more expensive with thumb shut-off valve. Again- save and use for many years.

Opinions will vary on reusing the tape but I feel that there has to be some clogging over a years use and since you always want to lay with the stripe up to eliminate clogging, it is just easier unrolling with new sections. I never bury tape in my high tunnels- it just lays under the plastic mulch. I had a groundhog chew it at an end one year but typically very little rodent damage. More often I'll puncture it in the transplanting process.

Check with Nolts Produce Supply in Leola,Pa but I see they are only slightly cheaper than the price you indicated.

Bmoser:

I appreciate you posting, I will check them out!

Thanks,

Joe

Agree with Drip Tape, I have used T-Tape and Aqua-Traxx. I haven't seen much of a difference in quality. I order from Berry Hill Irrigation. Their prices are good and most of the time, they ship the same day I order. Customer service is important to me.

Cost, when ordering 4,000 foot rolls, the price is 2 cents a foot shipped. Soaker hoses are much more expensive. 100 foot runs cost $2.00.

Reusing: I reuse most my drip tape for 2 or even 3 years.. By year three, I have more splices in it, so I just remove splices and replace.

Jay

Thanks, guys, for the detailed info on drip tape. Maybe I should try it out!

Jay:

Thanks... I was planning on ordering from berry hill! Someone said others have better prices, I still have to giventhat a look... You pay 2 cents? I was looking a 12 mil aquataxx, think it was, for 5 cents a foot...But that was for the use of small animals... You use it for 2-3 years... What mil do you have? Do you bury it or what? how do you store it?

Thanks,

Joe

Joe:

I use 10 mil, it is a 6,000 foot roll, divided by $160 is 0.026666. So it is .03 a foot, I guess the price has gone up some, but it is still reasonable.

I use it on the surface and bury some of it. It just depends on the crop. To store it, I just leave it in the field. I just pulled up hundreds of feet from last year tonight. I have tried to roll it up and it was too much work. Sometimes I just pull it to the side of the field and leave it for the winter.

The drip tape in the high tunnels gets used year around.

Jay

Really need some help! Live in the Caribbean and am not very familiar with drip irrigation. Was looking at Aqua traxx - can these be cut and joined if for example they get damaged with a garden fork?

Can I use them above ground? Don't have rodent or frost problems. I want them above ground as my gardener is not too clever and if he cannot see them, he will put a machete through them - he uses that for everything.

Our PSI is usually around 40 and average ambient temperature is about 85 degrees.

I have some garden beds with large shrubs in them that are about 5' wide and currently have the black rubber soaker hoses in them but I have found that they do not last.

There is actually a drip irrigation forum here at garden web.

Drip tape is wonderful. When you get leaks there are little 'joints' or whatever to connect them. I can't remember the word. I ran out last summer and needed like 5 more. So always have plenty.
PSI doesn't matter because you put a thing on the beginning to lower pressure. They are used on top of the ground but many people put mulch over the top. They are easy to install and cheap. Generally I replace most lines every year but I have a market garden and lots of gophers. Otherwise I would try the higher grade tape for multiple years.

IMO , lead contamination from plastic water hose working gloves, brass fittings are overblown and misinterpreted.

NUMBER ONE: When they say a certain plastic hose has 500 ppm of lead, it does NOT mean that the water that comes out of it has 500 ppm of lead. In the link provided, they sited that in one of their tests, the water sample from ONE of the plastic hoses tested contained 0.28 ppm of lead. So that might have been the highest detection they found in their digging, if not misrepresented.

NUMBER TWO: The water that comes out of a plastic garden hose is not for direct drinking. You water your garden with it. So if there is a trace of LEAD it is going to be absorbed by the soil and further become diluted. NOW, the NEXT question is how much of that lead will be absorbed wit the plants and how much of that absorbed lead is going to be present in the edible part of the plant : PROBABLY next to nothing. Probably most soils already have higher trace of lead before you water them.

The meaningful researched would have been to water certain vegetable with the worse plastic garden hose all season and then measure the amount of lead within that vegetable.

So, I don't know about you folhs, but I am not going to throw away my garden hose, working glove and brass fittings, knee pads .. tomorrow and try to find lead free replacement for those items.

Seysonn, the biggest concern is children playing in lead-contaminated dirt. Young children put their hands and dirt-contaminated toys in their mouths and are very susceptible to lead poisoning. If there is a chance that the soil is contaminated and young children "help" in the garden it would be wise to have both the child and the soil tested for lead. This is important for children under 6, particularly so for those under 3 years old. Not sure how much the lead in hoses contributes to contaminating soils; a more-oft implicated culprit is deteriorating lead-based paint from nearby structures, but maybe worth checking. Note this link:

Here is a link that might be useful: Lead Screening for NH Soils

â¢Posted by NilaJones 7b (My Page) on Tue, Mar 12, 13 at 22:58
What? What is this cancer warning? I have not seen it.
.........................................................................................

Must be California, everything causes cancer there.

What are you gonna do with emitter location after crop rotation?

I had a bad phone call with Berry Hill last year and sulked and didn't order from them. This year I did. Their stuff is superior and prices are good. I think the tape can last 2-3 years if rodents don't chew on it. I had bad gopher problems before and had to toss all the t tape every year. Now I have killed the gophers and the tapes are looking good. I am not going to throw them out. Berry Hill's accessories are much better than Drip Work's too.