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There is always enough work in the suburban area. Especially a lot of time is occupied by three main cares of the summer resident - watering, loosening and weeding. Installing the automatic irrigation system will significantly reduce labor costs, save strength and allocate time for more important activities - transplanting, pruning, harvesting and conservation.
Advantages and disadvantages of automatic watering
Establish such a system will not be very difficult, and the gardener, in addition to saving energy and time, receives many more benefits. Auto-watering the garden allows:
- Carry out regular watering in your absence. The owner of the site can always leave for a long time and do not worry that the plantings will dry up.
- Serve moisture directly to the roots of plants. This saves water and does not break the top layer of the soil, as after a regular watering with a watering can, therefore, it is less likely to loosen the bed.
- Add dissolved fertilizers to water for irrigation.
- Do not worry about uneven watering, when parts of the plantations do not reach the moisture, and some are flooded.
- To water at night. This is extremely convenient for crops for which sprinkling is preferable, but it is not recommended to do this in the sun to avoid burns on the leaves.
Any automation has its drawbacks, which must be taken into account when planning a system of automatic watering beds:
- with a long absence it is difficult to establish a suitable schedule for autowave, because periods of drought can be replaced by prolonged rains, and the weather forecast is far from always correct;
- when unplanned power failure, the automation stops working;
- the installation of the watering of the beds will cost more if the water intake is made from an open reservoir, or the working pressure in the water pipe does not correspond to the parameters of the auto-irrigation system.
In the latter case, it is necessary to put cleaning filters or additional equipment that regulates the water pressure.
Types of automatic watering systems
Set up automatic watering can be for any plantation, whether it is beds, a greenhouse, a lawn or houseplants in pots. Only the scale of work and the ways of water supply differ. There are three basic systems of auto-watering.
Sprinklers
Through special devices water splashes on the surface, irrigating a certain area. Such systems are usually installed on lawns.
Drip irrigation
In this case, moisture is supplied to the roots of plants and is not consumed over the whole area of the bed or greenhouse. This method has four big pluses:
- water is saved;
- The upper layer of the soil is not disturbed, and it is much less necessary to loosen;
- weed growth is significantly reduced;
- the air remains dry.
Drip irrigation is necessary for greenhouses, since high humidity promotes the spread of diseases in a closed ground.
Underground autopow
Such systems are installed wherever large areas need to be irrigated, but sprinkling is difficult or impossible. Summer residents use underground watering extremely rarely because of the complicated installation and expensive equipment.
Auto-watering the lawn with sprinkling
Such systems are often put up by owners of vast lawns. With their help, a lot of effort and time is saved, and the installation of the sprinkler system is the least expensive and does not require fine tuning. Lawn grass easily tolerates a small excess or lack of moisture and high humidity. A minimum set of components for the installation of such a system includes only hoses, cranes and sprinklers. When the tap is opened in a water pipe, water is fed through the hoses to the sprinklers, and after a while it is turned off. This method refers to semi-automatic, as it only works in the presence of the owner. In order to irrigate a lawn without human intervention, the installation is supplemented with the following components:
- pumping station, which provides a constant pressure;
- water filters that purify the water from foreign inclusions, capable of hitting the sprinkler holes;
- solenoid valves, regulating the supply of water to individual sprinklers;
- controllers that control the entire system according to a given algorithm.
If the device of a lawn only is planned, it is better to lay hoses under the earth, having left on a surface only sprinklers.
Preliminary make a drawing, which carries all the elements of the system on a scale with reference to the terrain. Such a detailed drawing will quickly find a malfunction or lay additional underground communications without touching the already existing automatic irrigation system.
All the components of the sprinkler system can be bought ready-made in specialized shops or assembled from individual parts independently. "Gardena "Hunter "Rain Bird" are famous for convenient and inexpensive sprinklers.
Arrangement of drip irrigation
Drip irrigation is used wherever sprinkling is undesirable. Most garden crops do not tolerate high humidity. So, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, onions, many flowers can get fungal diseases. Therefore, the device of the drip irrigation system is preferable for them. The difficulty is that almost all these plants need to be watered only with warm water, which means that you need a capacity of the corresponding volume. The barrel is set at a height of not less than 1 meter to create the desired pressure.The simplest system of drip irrigation consists of:
- capacity;
- crane;
- water filter;
- a start-connector;
- conventional hose;
- a drip hose;
- end cap.
Start-connectors are needed to adjust the water supply to separate sections of the drip hose. With their help, you can increase or reduce the time of watering individual beds without overlapping the common tap.
The system of automatic drip irrigation can be supplemented with a pump that will pump water into the barrel and controllers that control the water supply in automatic mode.
