Tree Irrigation
Trees consume large amounts of water, so it is important to ensure that the trees can be regularly watered while the trees are establishing. Regular tree irrigation is also important if the trees are located in hostle environments such as town squares or in tree pits as it is difficult for the tress to form the root structure they need to find water.
Hand watering of trees is difficult, even when there has been provision for water points adjacent to the root ball. Although this allows an operator to push a hose down into the root ball, it is difficult to get sufficient quantities of water into the root area in a short time.
Using drip lines for tree irrigation can provide the required amount of water over a much longer time period than hand watering. By watering the trees over a longer time frame the output of the tree irrigation can be kept low - ensuring the water is readily absorbed into the root ball.
When trees are placed in their own tree pit, a supply pipe will bring the water supply to each pit. A ring of Permadrip drip line is then wrapped around the base of the tree. Larger trees have longer lengths of drip pipe containing more drippers, allowing smaller and larger trees to be watered in the same irrigation zone.
Drip irrigation for hedges
Hedges are normally constructed to provide a screen, so it is important to ensure that these establish as quickly as possible. A drip line is normally laid in a single run down the length of the hedge, although for larger hedges one line of drip irrigation can be laid down each side of the hedge.
The water supply for the hedge irrigation system can either be provided using an underground supply pipe, or for temporary watering for the establishment of the hedge, a fitting to connect a hosepipe can incorporated into the start of the run of drip line.
Drip line specification
For reliability it is important to specify commercial quality drip lines for projects, rather than consumer grade pipes. Commercial grade drip lines are manufactured to very high specifications. The design life on the drip line is 10 years. Access do not recommend the use of drip lines made from recycled car tyres, as these can have highly variable outputs, and can very quickly degrade and block.
Access Irrigation specify drip line manufactured by one of the world's leading drip irrigation companies. The drip line is commercial grade, with high coefficients of uniformity and highly reliable, self cleaning drip nozzles. All drip lines are pressure compensated, ensuring that when used to the manufacturers specification, the output for each nozzle will always be the same.
