Drip Irragation System

[Black Jack]

Hello everyone,
Can someone please explain the negative side of drip irragation?
I have built 4 raised beds. Each Raisedbed is 12 ' deep X 3 ' wide and 10' long. I have them all butted up against each other so they form a straight line against my brick fence. I am planning on using a continous staright line of drip irragation for each bed. My question is how do you get an equal amount of water at the end of the line as you get at the beginning of the line?
Thanks,
Black Jack

[MasterComposter]

I'm not aware of any negatives, except for the time and hassle involved in setting it up correctly in the beginning.

I have my drip irrigation system hooked up to my automatic sprinkler system, and I am just assuming that it will send equal amounts of water through all of the microtubing. I am running one tube to each plant, rather than running a single tube with a bunch of holes in it.

But with a soaker hose, you end up with relatively equal amounts of water throughout the entire hose, so maybe it would work that way with drip holes too.

[The French Gardener]

If your watering hoses are not very long and if you avoid bottleneck effects (due to small diameters) with the tees you use in your forks, the loss of pressure is negligeable at the ends. And most drippers are pressure-compensated.
With my very low pressure micro irrigation system (MIETBP) I never get over 24 m (around 80 feet).

[honeylemon]

That's ingenious. How about the cost?

[The French Gardener]

Originally Posted by honeylemon

That's ingenious. How about the cost?

Are you adressing me, honeylemon, about the MIETBP system, or are you adressing MasterComposter ?

[honeylemon]

Originally Posted by honeylemon

That's ingenious. How about the cost?

Originally Posted by The French Gardener

Are you adressing me, honeylemon, about the MIETBP system, or are you adressing MasterComposter ?

I am referring to the MIETBP system..

[The French Gardener]

The cost of my drip emitters is very low, as a kit of 30 m of Lifecell microporous hose (sold 44 euros) allows to cut 1363 rings, each of them (22 mm long) being used as one dripper. Therefore one dripper costs only 0.032 euros. But of course it takes a lot of time to slip them on the semi-rigid 13-mm-interior-diametre 16-mm-exterior diameter pipe.

(My MIETBP present prototype has the capability to develop a maximum length of 300 m, implying 1200 drippers (4 rings per metre) ; but I never reach such length and rarely get over 230 m).

You have to add the cost of the ordinary semi-rigid pipe itself (about 0.4 euros per metre) and the cost of 15-mm-interior-diameter hose for the flexible connections (about 0.5 euros per metre). But you can use old worn out pipes and hoses for making the short connections needed by the system, as well as old faucets and dropped-out sorts of things. They will withstand such very low pressure almost until they begin to be rotten.

The transparent hose (for the vertical manometer-pressure-limiter) cost about the same, but you don’t have to use very much of it.

If the MIETBP system catches on, some day, the market will commercialize hoses integrating the adapted kind of drippers, and I guess these will cost about the same price as other drip-integrated micro-irrigation hoses.