Trying to figure out a drip line for my sloped backyard took me three full weekends

I have a small garden in my backyard that slopes down toward the fence. I bought a basic drip irrigation kit from the hardware store, thinking it would be a simple Saturday job. The problem was the water pressure. At the top of the slope, the emitters worked fine, but at the bottom, they just dribbled or didn't work at all. I spent the first weekend just moving the main line around, thinking I had a kink. The second weekend, I tried adding more pressure regulators, which made it worse. Finally, I called a friend who does landscaping. He came over, looked at it for five minutes, and said, 'You need to run separate zones for the high and low points.' I had to redo the whole layout with two different lines coming off the tap, each with its own valve. Has anyone else had to deal with a big slope in their setup? What did you do?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_thomas17d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly, wasn't your main issue needing a pressure-compensating drip line, not just separate zones?

finleyf8817d ago

Wait, you remembered that whole thing about my drip line? That was like two years ago!

oliver212d ago

Yeah, that was exactly it for me too. I fought with my old system for a whole summer before someone told me about pressure compensating lines. Swapping that out fixed everything.