Simple, DIY solutions to garden and landscape watering with porous rubber hoses
Imagine being able to water the expensive plants in your garden with no more fuss than turning the water on! Imagine watering the plants accurately without interrupting the use of your garden. Imagine keeping your garden vistas green and colourful while being economical with water. Well, with a little time, some simple D.I.Y. and Leaky Pipe® materials, you can quickly achieve this.
Setting up your Leaky Pipe Irrigation System
Firstly decide what you wish to water in the garden. If it is a hedge, it can be as simple as connecting Leaky Pipe to a hosepipe via a Hosesnap connector that we are all familiar with.
One or more Leaky Pipe porous hoses are laid where the water is to be placed. It is very flexible so you can either lay it in a straight line or “snake” it around to pass close to the roots of your shrubs, trees and other plants. Spacing in borders should be about 60cm-90cm(2-3feet) apart - it’s not an exact science.
Any Leaky Pipe can work up to 50metres in length, from the barbed connection. After that, it will run out of water! But this is not a limit on the amount of Leaky Pipe that you can work at one time. This limit is dependant on the strength of the water source and how you plumb it around any garden.
As as guide, a water source similar to that of a typical garden hosepipe is usually capable of running 250metres of Leaky Pipe at one time. This total amount can be cut up, placed around the borders and interconnected with either hose or polypipe. We hope we are about to show you how you could easily be watering the whole garden in one go.
Every Leaky Pipe® lateral needs to be sealed off. This can be done easily by inserting a 12mm barbed plug. Barbed fittings are designed to grip on the inside of pipe and don’t need a reinforcing clip to keep them connected with the pressure Leaky Pipe needs to work.
Leaky Pipe laterals can be extended or repaired with a 12-12 connector so if you want to adapt your design in the future you don’t loose any pipe. So you can’t go too far wrong!
Special equipment required? - A pair of secateurs, some hose, (or polytube), some Leaky Pipe®, barbed fittings and you! A complete range of straight, tee and elbow fittings are available to allow you to plumb your system to suit your application. Remember that Leaky Pipe® fits a 12size barb. Normal garden hose, and 16mm polytube fits 16mm size barbed fitting. Both equal and reducing size fittings are available.
You can use Leaky Pipe on the surface where you can see it working, however, this is not so efficient as the top surface of the pipe tends to dry off with repeated on/off watering cycles. To improve efficiency and economic use of water, we recommend that Leaky Pipes are either buried in the soil or laid on the soil, covered with a mulch. Contact around the pipe helps the movement of the irrigation water away from the porous hose by capillary action. The mulch can be organic or inorganic and will help conserve moisture and reduce weed seed germination. If you ever need to lift the Leaky Pipe, you can simply peel it up through an organic mulch. Of course, you can do the same in soil if it is not too deep and you water for a few hours before pulling it up).