We had so many thoughts when it came to figuring out how to water our 2,600 sq ft garden… and yes you’re probably thinking that’s a lot! Why yes, yes it is, but it’s what we wanted (I wanted) so anywho, moving on!
The obvious first thought was, buy 150ft of garden hose and run it out there every other day and water the garden for 2 hours by hand…no. The other thought, run the 150ft hose out there and hook it to a sprinkler and water the garden, well then we would need to split the hose and run 2 sprinklers because of the length of the garden…no.
I got to thinking how could we water the garden, without using electricity or water (which we are on a well so that didn’t matter as much to us but some people have to pay for their water which can get pricey when you have to water every other day in the heat of the summer), but we still have to pay for electricity to run the well, which we didn’t want to do. SO we needed to figure out how to collect water and then water the garden…and yes there are other ways to do this but this is what we decided worked for us!
How to Build the Irrigation System in the Garden!
Need a visual? Check out our Youtube video at the end of this post!
Here is the list of supplies we used to build the irrigation system and like I said earlier, there are a bunch of ways to do this and different supplies you could use, this is just how we did it!
I’ll go in order from the barrel to the end of the line!
- 55 Gallon Drum or Rain Barrel (food grade & cleaned really well-we just bought ours used off of facebook marketplace).
- Mesh (for the top of the barrels to keep debris out but allow water in-this is optional but it sure helps).
- Hose Bibb 3/4″ x 3/4″
- Brad Point Drill Bit 3/4″
- Thread Tape
- Silicone Caulk (for sealing around the hose bibb to prevent leaks from the barrel).
- T-filter 3/4″
- Garden Hose Coupling 3/4″ x 3/4″ female to female (we used plastic but I’m going to use metal for future years)
- Garden Hose Adapter 3/4″ x 1/2″ male to male
- Drip Manifold 1/2″ with 6- 1/4″ Outlets
- Drip Irrigation line 1/4″ with 6″ emitter spacing (depending on your row lengths and if you use pressure instead of gravity, you may want 1/2″, our rows are roughly 28′. You can also choose different emitter spacing if you want them further apart).
- Goof Plugs 1/4″ (this is my favorite piece hahaha)!
- Landscape Staples
- Insert Connectors 1/4″ (this is only needed if you need to connect hoses together ex: you have a bunch of short hoses from rows you cut down and now you need to connect them to make one long hose for another row).
Now to put it all together!
FIRST– Clean your barrels! Then set them up on some sort of stand (we used 2 levels of cinder blocks). Keep in mind whatever you have it set on needs to be able to withstand the weight of 55 gallons worth of water (460lbs) and yes, they need to be up off the ground for the gravity effect to work. Ours were about 2ft up off the ground but the higher you go the better the water flow. We also were struggling with wind because our garden is so out in the open and we didn’t want them to be too high up, so just do whatever makes sense for your layout.
SECOND– Cut holes in your barrels! For our barrels out in the garden we cut a rectangle in the top in between the two lids. and then you need a 3/4″ brad point drill bit to make a hole on whatever side you want the front to be, about 1″ from the bottom of the barrel, for your hose bibb to screw into. We used a pipe fitting that my husband cut to make a tap to screw into the barrel hole to make lines for the hose bibb to screw into so it fits better.
THIRD– Collect all of your supplies and start assembly!
Make sure your barrel is dry- then screw the hose bibb (wrapped in thread tape) into the bottom hole and silicone around the edge and let it dry! (I would just like to say my husband did this part and I have realized that clearly I have better silicone smoothing out abilities than him…*facepalm*)
After the silicone has set and is dry (we waited over night for this) then you can assemble the rest of the pieces. So you’ll screw the T-filter onto the hose bibb, then the garden hose coupling onto the t-filter, then the garden hose adapter onto the coupling, then the drip manifold onto the adapter (for the drip manifold, the little black plugs on the end are hard to get off, I had to use a pair of needle nose pliers-also only pull off the number of hoses you’re going to connect to that barrel), then the irrigation line onto the manifold.
FORTH– Lay out all of your irrigation line! This step could actually be done at any time, we actually did this before we had the barrels out there, but I would highly recommend making sure your measurements are correct BEFORE you cut! Also if you are putting this in before you have plants in the ground you’ll want to go back and make sure the lines are as close to your plants as possible.
We bought 100ft rolls of drip irrigation line and our rows are roughly 28′ long so obviously I had to cut the line at the end of each row because I didn’t want to have to loop around at the end of the row since this was gravity fed and not pressurized. (If it was pressurized I would’ve just made it 1 continuous line and snaked it through my rows).
Take your irrigation line and unroll it to the length of your row (if you have your barrel and manifold set up go ahead and just connect the line to the manifold) and then take it to the end of the row and cut it-make sure you don’t create too much of a tripping hazard! Stick a goof plug in the end of the line where you cut. Once you have your line laid out exactly where you want it to hit your plants put landscapes staples in to hold down the line (I just placed them in random spots and just a few per line).
FIFTH– Test it out! Fill your barrel with water and test out your contraption! Check for leaks at the barrel and make sure that every single emitter (the little holes in the drip line) are dripping water on every single row you have that barrel hooked to, from end to end.
Figuring Out How Much You Need & What Kind!
Alright, like I said before this was just our way of doing this, there are a bunch of different kinds of supplies and ways to make this happen. We were trying to do this as cheap as possible but also have decent quality so that it will last for a few years.
So the questions to ask yourself: (I will tell you our answers as well but HINT: it probably won’t be exactly what you need)
- How big is my garden? (Ours is 2,600 sq ft)
How many rows do I have? (We have 30 rows) - How long are my rows? (Ours are 28ft long)
- How much drip irrigation line do I need? (We ended up ordering 14 100ft rolls -and ended up being able to make 2 more rolls with the extra line we connected from cut offs.)
- What kind of irrigation line do I need? (We went with the 1/4″dripline with 6″ emitter spacing, I wanted the emitters closer together but you could get 9″ and 12″ spacing also).
- How many barrels do I need? (We used 6 barrels- this was totally a guess! I just figured up the amount of rows I had and the length and then just thought of a number that would evenly work.)
- How many rows can I put on one barrel? (We put 5 rows on 1 barrel -because we have 30 rows in our garden and decided to have 6 barrels! -also because of the type of dripline since it’s maximum run length is 30ft and we had to cut the end of each line and make each row have its own drip line instead of looping it around).
Based on how many barrels you have, that’s how many of each supply you’re going to need for the whole connection manifold piece:
- We have 6 barrels so we needed 6 hose bibbs, 6 t-filters, 6 couplings, 6 adapters, & 6 manifolds.
- We ended up getting 3 packs of goof plugs (because they came in a pack of 10 and I have 30 rows of line I needed to plug the ends of).
- We got 1 box of 500 landscape staples.
- We got 2 packages of the insert connectors (becauase they came in a pack of 10 and I had extra drip line cut off from almost all of my rows that I needed to connect to make 2 long rows).
- We got 1 tube of clear silicone (the one for window sealing).
- We also used a roll of thread tape (well, my husband did for every single connection…I did not, and it turned out just fine).
Maintenance
You’ll need to make sure to clear the debris off the tops of the barrels every once in a while to keep your water clean and keep the mesh screen clear. If you don’t have a lot of trees or it doesn’t get super windy in the area around your barrels you won’t have too much to worry about.
Transfering water! We have a system that isn’t necessarily super convenient but it works for now! Maybe in future years we will win the lottery and be able to make this process easier, who knows hahaha! You’ll need to collect water from gutters and I say “need to” because the barrels that just sit out in the open, even though the top is completely cut open, will not collect that much rain water. For instance we got about a weeks worth of rain and the gutter barrels overfilled EVERYDAY (yes, a 55 gallon drum connected to 1 gutter downspout was overflowing with water after 1 day of just a calm steady rain), while the garden barrels only got a few inches of water in them.
Here is Our Water Transfer Process:
- We collect water at our gutters around our house in barrels (which we also have hose bibbs on but we just stick the water pump hose in the hole at the top-the hose bibbs on these barrels are just for filling up a watering can or bucket).
- Once those fill up we take our extra storage barrels and put them on our little trailer that we pull with the 4 wheeler.
- We have a water pump that my husband took and old hose and put together to transfer the water from the gutter barrel to the storage barrel (the pumping process takes about 5-10 minutes per barrel). He also put together a pvc pipe with a filter on the end for the hose that sucks water out.
- We then take the storage barrel and drive it over to the garden and transfer the water from the storage barrel into the garden barrel.
- Then whenever we’re ready we just turn on the hose bibb for the barrel that is connect to the certain rows we want watered! (pssstt: set a timer for about 1-2 hours or however long you want and then go turn it off).
TA DA!
Watch How We Did it Here!
I hope this helped! Happy irrigating!
