Irrigation Going Live

FAC member Carl Prizzi and I (with the help of Mike, another volunteer) actually connected drip pipe and pressured up the system today in field 2 over the bio-intensive raised beds. We're in production and we feel pretty good about it.

Today we pulled the header pipe out of its shallow trench, drilled holes with the special auger bit, pushed in rubber gaskets, attached valved feeder lines, and connected the 50 foot drip hoses.

Things did not go smooghly at first. We kept getting leaks around the gaskets in the PVC pipe.

We learned that we needed to drill the pilot holes slightly bigger to avoid excessive pressure on the gaskets. If the fit was too tight, the gaskets were ripping. After adding 24 successful hoses, we could see and feel the correct diameter for the connections. We know now that as we move our productioon line to field 1 (four times bigger than field 2), we will be able to speed up the process and not have to double back to fix leaks. It was a pleasure to see the magic of zoned drip irrigation, with water going slowly and direclty to the plant roots!