How To Hydrozone An Irrigation System That's Already Installed
July 23, 2014
It can be challenging to hydrozone an irrigation system after it's been installed. In Part 3 of our Drought Solutions video series, you'll learn how to hydrozone by making a simple tweak to the existing system.
Hydrozoning An Irrigation System - Video Transcript
Hydrozoning is easy to do at installation. It's a little tougher to do after. There's some stuff we can do though.
And what hydrozoning is, it is putting like plant material in like soils with like exposures on the same valve.
So, typical yard. Let's say this is just a back yard. Let's say this side of the yard has the same plant material as this side. Same soil, same plant material, different sun exposure. This side is in full sun. This side is in shade. And we got this drip system going to all of our plants all the way around.
Traditionally what I see is what? You've got this cool controller that has program on top of program. Program 1, Program A - turf. Program B - shrubs. Program C - trees. And the only time it's mixed up is shrubs and trees. It may be trees then shrubs.
We use 3 programs. Why did they give us all those other programs? For fun?
Hydrozoning. We've got other programs in there so that now we could put like things on like programs. There's an opportunity save water and here's why.
This is in the sunshine. This is in the shade. Which one are we gonna water to? We're gonna water to the sunshine.
So let's say we have to up our run time and double our run time to keep this stuff alive in the summer.
What's this look like over here in the shade? It's mush. It's a swamp. It's that wet soil we had on that one photo. It's dead soil. We just created this non-living soil that is over watered by at least 20%, because I know it's closer to 50%.
But you say, "OK, I didn't install it. I didn't install it, what do you want me to do? If that plant dies over there, I gotta replace it."
You're right. The option is, is over here put 2 gallon an hour emitters in. Over here, put 1 gallon. Or 4 and 2, or whatever the site requires. You can hydrozone on the same valve and get close. And every time you get close, you're saving water.