We all want to conserve precious water, and the best way to do that in our landscaping is a drip irrigation system. It delivers the right amount of water and no more, at the right time and frequency. That said, homeowners must deal with two considerations: the irrigation system and the landscape being irrigated, both of which change over time.
Over time, irrigation systems can lose effectiveness in various ways. Water emitters that worked fine last year become clogged and deliver less water this year. Sometimes emitters go rogue and start sending out too much water. Or some emitters are still watering plants that died over the winter or are positioned in unhelpful places. Leaks develop. End plugs pop off.
Our landscaping is always changing, even without our active involvement. For instance, some plants actually “move” over time. Parts may die and other parts prosper, or they develop shoots away from the original ones, as iris and many other plants do. Some plants propagate by seeding themselves—and not in spots that are currently irrigated.
A four liter per hour, or 4 LPH, emitter should release about a 1½ cups of water in five minutes. A plant that needed a 4 LPH emitter last year may be bigger now and need an 8 LPH emitter, or perhaps a combination of a 4 and a 2. New trees or large shrubs that needed three emitters a foot from the trunk now may need five emitters positioned three feet from the trunk to accommodate where the roots are now.
In Santa Fe, watering during the summer accounts for approximately a third of a homeowner’s total water use. Of course, that is the time of year when water is scarcest. A drip system that leaks or waters dead plants wastes water and money. So does using sprinklers at other than permitted times, when serious evaporation is less likely.
The bottom line is that for our drip irrigation to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, we need to take time every spring (and ideally, more often) to inspect, repair and update it. For more tips, visit www.savewatersantafe.com.
Water Matters: Drip system maintenance
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