Pop-up sprinklers on the cheap 2020-05-14
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Living in Texas means a putting a lot of water on the garden if you
want it to survive the summer. We don't go crazy and seem to respect
the water restrictions more than most do, but we haven't xeriscaped
either (maybe one day). Our house is a new-ish build now which didn't
come with in-ground irrigation, and I'm too cheap to have that put it
if we can manage without. We have about 1/3 of an acre to cover so it
wouldn't be that cheap.
Moving an oscillating sprinkler around on the end of the hose isn't
much fun, and it takes ages to cover a decent sized space with enough
water to get to the roots of things properly. Impact sprinklers work
better for the shapes we have to water, but it's still a pain moving
them around. In summer we are usually (depending on conditions)
limited to 2 or 1 day a week watering. You can keep stuff alive with
once a week, but you need to water a long time so it reaches deep
enough, and watering is not permitted after 10am, or before 6pm due to
the heat of the day.
Luckily there's an alternative to getting up at 2am to move a
sprinkler on the hose around... you can get a poor imitation of proper
in-ground irrigation by using:
* Long-throw in-ground rotary sprinklers, burying them at the corners
of the space.
* An adapter to give a push-on hose connector that pokes up just above
the ground level.
* Multi-outlet hose timers, and a number of hoses.
There's a product called [Quick-Snap which is a sprinkler you bury,
plus the parts to connect up a hose as a kit, ready to go.
https://www.quick-snap.com/products-1
You can also do what I've done, and spend about 20 minutes in the
sprinkler aisle at the DIY store, working out which fittings allow
getting the same outcome for half the price, given some patience and
PTFE tape.
I now have a system with 6 sprinklers in the front yard, and 4 in the
back. I have 3 hoses on a timer in the front, 2 on a timer in the
back. On our allotted watering day I can set it up to run half the
sprinklers in the early morning, to finish before 10am. Then, ready
for the evening, I swap the hoses and the rest will run after 6pm. It
takes about 2 hours to put down 3/4" water over the area covered by
each sprinkler. They run one after another on each timer. Our water
pressure can reach the full coverage for one in the front, and one in
back at the same time.
Total cost has been a couple of hundred dollars... a lot cheaper than
getting proper in-ground irrigation, but a lot more convenient and
giving more even watering than moving around a normal hose-end
sprinkler.
