Downtown Luxury Slum

It’s time for a few updates on our Luxury Yard Renovation. First, when I mentioned expanding and planting my garden a couple months ago, I also mentioned that I was hoping to add some sort of irrigation system to make it easier to keep up with the watering. I have done just that.

I mangled together various Rain Bird components to build a simple drip irrigation system.

Starting at the faucet, I attached this Faucet Connection Kit, which includes a backflow preventer, a 25 psi regulator, and a mesh filter. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to put it on a timer initially but now I’m not sure why I didn’t do it in the first place. I would save me from the times that I forget to turn the water off and accidently leave it running for 24 hours. So I’m planning to add a Timer but they’ve been out of stock the last couple times I’ve been to the store and I’ve been too lazy to order one. The other end of the connection kit is directly attached to 1/2″ Drip Irrigation Tubing.

I ran the 1/2″ tubing up the wall of our house, used a hook to hold it up, then added a 90 degree angle using 1/2″ Barbed Elbow attached to more 1/2 inch tubing. That tubing runs above our gate, then it’s caught and carried down using this Double Shepherd Hook because it was the best thing I could think of using.

From the shepherd hook, the tubing just runs to the garden, weaving in and out of the chain link.

A second shepherd hook catches the tubing at the corner of the garden and carries it down to garden level.

Another 1/2″ barbed elbow is used to turn the corner and run the tubing flat along that back of corner garden box and then a final barbed elbow carries the tubing along the left side of the corner box. With just the components I mentioned so far, if I turned on the faucet, the water would run through the tubing and shoot straight out the top center of the above picture. This 1/2″ End Closure is use to fold the end back on itself to stop the water flow, much like a crimp in a hose. But then we still don’t have a useful irrigation system.

But as you can see there are smaller 1/4″ brown tubes attached to the 1/2″ black tubes. The 1/4″ tubing is actually Emitter Tubing with 6″ Spacing, meaning it has holes every 6 inches that let water out. The 1/4″ tubing attaches to the 1/2″ tubing using these 1/4″ Barbed Elbows. And the ends of the 1/4″ tubing are plugged using these 1/4″ Closure Goof Plugs. The 1/4″ tubing is held in place in the garden using a few Galvanized Stakes.

Since my garden boxes are tiered, I cut small holes in the frame to allow the tubing to run through it, rather than having to drape over it.

Overall the system works pretty well. I might consider adding a few sprinkler heads or something next year, depending on what the plants seem to want but at this point the main problem with my garden seems to be that I was too lazy to put up netting or fencing this year so critters keep digging up my seeds and snacking on my plants.