The MIETBP system (very low pressure micro-irrigation)

[The French Gardener]

I have developed in my garden (in southern France) a drip irrigation system radically different from all other present-day micro-irrigation system and very well adapted to the needs of an amateur gardener.

Here are three of the main features characterizing this system :

1/ it works around a 0.2-bar pressure (2 m of water column), very well controlled by using 2.35-m-high transparent vertical hoses acting as manometers and pressure limiters, allowing to balance the pressure all over the garden ;

2/ with such limited very low pressure, the irrigation network does not need clamps ;

3/ the drip emitters must deliver a flow proportional to the pressure within the 1.3-to-2.3-m-of-water-column range, with a value worth around 1 or 2 L/hour/emitter at a 2-m-of-water-column pressure.

I have succeeded in designing drippers fulfilling the needed requirements. My drip emitters are rings cut out of 15-mm-interior-diameter porous hose tightly encircling 4 small holes bored into a 16-mm-exterior-diameter semi-rigid watering pipe. The oozing flow each of them delivers results essentially from a lateral diffusion from the 4 central holes (towards each of the two circular ends of the ring) along the cylindrical surface separating the ring and the overlapped pipe, the water finally dripping through each of the two circumferences delimitating the interface

More details are given in English in this page :

Very Low Pressure Microirrigation

But maybe somebody else (including professionals) will have other ideas about how to design the needed kind of drippers. If that is the case, I would like to know, and try …