Underground Irrigation

Hard wiring has been the interior design rage for some time now.  Stereos, kitchen appliances, computers and phone systems with their wiring concealed inside walls, under floors and carpets.  Hard wired houses let users operate appliances without all that fiddly plugging stuff in and unplugging other stuff – without tripping over wires, or leaving unsightly umbilical trails of cable all over the place.  Underground irrigation does basically the same thing, for gardens:  an underground irrigation system hard wires all the unsightly pipes and valves necessary for modern watering, under turf and into soil.

An underground irrigation system is no different to any other fixed watering setup.  Gardeners still have control over where they site their nozzles, what time water is dispensed and in what quantity.  The only change is that the piping in an underground irrigation system is completely concealed (and protected from strimmer damage) beneath the earth. 

There’s no unsightly hose, coiled like a dead snake in a puddle of its own water; no dripping nozzle; no trailing sprinkler wire.  The underground irrigation system uses pop-up nozzles (uni- and multi-directional) powered by water pressure:  when the water is turned on, the force of the pressure buildup squeezes the nozzle out of its housing.  Once the nozzle has risen, its pre-determined settings (type of spray, spray direction and duration) dictate how it dispenses water.  The lawn sprinkler, for example, in an underground irrigation system, generally rises in the centre of a turfed area and expels a rotating fan of fine mist.  The bedding nozzles of an underground irrigation system will pop up and spray jets over designated areas of ornamental borders.

The watering advantages of underground irrigation are obvious.  No water is wasted and no plants are accidentally ruined by a dragging hosepipe.  Other advantageous properties of underground irrigation:  with all the piping safely buried underground, a careless swipe with a strimmer, lawnmower or set of shears is impossible.  The piping in an underground irrigation system is made of tough polyethylene, with proper plumbing-type joints and fittings, so it resists subterranean attack by moles too. 

Underground irrigation is primarily designed for large-area watering, rather than targeted root system watering.  Baskets and planters, obviously, can’t be included in an underground irrigation system:  besides, their delicate plants require drip watering, which targets specific root bunches rather than the whole pot.    An underground irrigation setup can be timed, just like a drip system:  the network of pipes can be connected either to simple “egg timer” style control units, or digital ones capable of holding multiple seasonal programs.  The subterranean valves in an underground irrigation setup can be linked in to a timing relay so that designated areas of garden are watered at proper times and frequencies. 

It won’t do the really fiddly bits, then, but for the broad canvas underground irrigation is clean, efficient, modern and surprisingly easy.  Once the garden is hard-wired (Colibri do a good range of pop-up sprinkler heads and systems), watering it in large areas is as easy as pressing a switch.  Nothing to plug in, attach, turn or trip over – just neat, effective irrigation.