Designing A Drip Irrigation System

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@emil

I didn’t think of this, but also a good point. Depending on the type of tree you have (and how old it is), you want to water out to the drip line of the tree. Obviously on a new tree this is limited to the root ball – but watering outside of it will attract the roots to grow outward in search of water.

I have two Kwanzan Cherry, one Autumn Glory Maple and a Magnolia… all are brand-new, just installed but their root-ball is fairly substantial - the trunk is about 2" in diameter, I’d say?

Given that they are new, is it OK to water beyond the root ball?

@emil

Just curious, did you add additional drip line; or emitters? 13 emitters per tree? Are you running Netafim for the entire drip line, or only around the diameters of each trees?

I just widened the what was there - basically, the installer had wrapped a long length of tubing into two concentric rings - I just widened them such that it was more or less a single ring, as much as possible anyway…

The # of emitters varies by tree and ranges from 10 to 16 emitters

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We’re running “blank” Netafim tubing between the plants and trees, using the tubing with emitters only around the plants… in addition, the installer also used some more “heavy-duty” when appropriate as such as going under the lawn or other areas where lots of weight might occur…

**** EDIT ****

@emil

Hmm, good question. We don’t have a simple way of doing this at the moment besides crunching the numbers and overriding the schedule. In theory, we calculate this amount for each zone, then the Iro refills said amount. When you mention, “the first one”, do you have other types of trees with different watering requirements on the same zone?

Yes, I have three different types (Kwanzan Cherry, Autumn Glory Maple and Magnolia); though, not sure of their watering requirements as of yet…

So right now, the only way to put down a fixed amount of water is to monitor it manually and adjust accordingly? Is there no way to adjust the zone attributes and set up the “bank account” for 1" in some way?