I am off to buy some parts for my irrigation system. The prices are weird. Most of the stuff is made in China and looks the same. One company will charge $3, another company $13, and there are $25 versions where the only visible difference is the packaging. There is no explanation on the package of why they are different. Here are results from my experiments.
Who?
Who wants irrigation parts? People who like building things themselves or cannot find a packaged system to fit their needs. You might pay someone to install a system but investigate the options yourself to make sure you understand what you will get.
Irrigation requirements are specific to your microclimate and plant select. If you are new to an area, look for other people in your area growing the type of plants you want. Their advice is more focused than some generic Web page you found through Google or the even less relevant patched together advice from AI engines.
And plan ahead. If you are not a planner, you might benefit from a garden designer or you could be lucky by meeting someone with a garden containing all the elements you want.
Building an irrigation system is for someone who can see the end result in the garden they want or is happy to put things in then move them and possibly throw stuff away. in my case, with plants, I am happy to buy two of each plant, when they are something like $5, with one in a sunny location to continue growing in winter and the other in a shady spot to survive summer. If one dies and one survives, the experiment is a success. I am also happy to add an extra watering tube if one is struggling with dry weather in summer. Some other people want instant perfect does everything first time so they never have to look at it again. Doing yourself does not everyone.
What?
Based on plenty of tests, the cheapest brand is a throwaway brand. That plastic is a soft plastic that breaks easily. When you have to screw together two parts, one of them will strip a thread, because the plastic is too soft.
You step up from a $3 part to a $5 part, from $5 up to $29, they still appear nearly identical. The better parts are made with a firm plastic with solid fill, making the parts both firm and strong. They parts are made to fit properly. No loose edges and stuff. Ask people who have used the parts. There are brands to prefer and brands to avoid.
Some of the really cheap manufacturers do not make the dies to press plastic out. Instead they buy worn stuff from other factories. The parts are not an exact fit. Too tight. Too loose. They leak. A good factory has machines to cut dies, to shape metal, bronze, brass, some materials stronger than plastic. A good brand will use a good factory and use metal parts where appropriate. The result might last ten years instead of ten days.
Some brands are made up to sell rubbish including parts that are used or failed testing. That bad people in an industry might use a new brand every few months. People become upset at the poor quality of the brand A. They change to brand B then C then D.
Of course the manufacturer is not in Australia. You may not be able to find a brand when a part fails and you want to claim your money back from the guarantee.
I looked at a $5 product sold online from China. The warrantee says you have to ship the faulty product back to China. I checked. From $15 to $25 shipping. No thank you.
Tap fitting is coming in two different sizes, 25mm and 20mm. A lot of the fittings have a 25mm fitting and then they have a 20mm insert for smaller taps. For one brand, the insert failed. I had to take out the insert and replace it. That made the cheaper brand the same cost as the next brand up in quality.
You have to be really careful about screwing plastic parts in place. There is a high chance of shredding soft thread. Take your time. Carefully feel for the right thread. There will be resistance if the thread is not fitting the right way.
One comparison came up when I wanted a particular type of fitting that was $8 in one brand and $18 in the other brand. My use was only temporary so I couldn't see the point of spending $18, using it for a few months, then replacing it with a different type of fitting. I went for a cheaper one. I found a couple of cheaper ones. Because I needed to do the same thing with two taps and I was visiting several shops looking for other parts, I looked for the lowest cost option for this one specific use. I bought one of the cheaper brands. When I tried to fit the device on the tap, the thread stripped. The outside plastic looked tough but the inside plastic was soft junk. Luckily I purchased only the one and tested it.
In Australia, if something is not fit for purpose, return it to the shops, get your money back. Australia has good consumer laws. They only apply to buying in Australia from an Australian company. You are not protected when you shop online from other countries.
Keep the original receipt. When shop put something on sale, say reduced from $19 to $14, there are people who buy for $14 then peel off the on sale label and take it back to get a $19 refund.
At one stage, the Toro brand was presented as the best choice in our local shops but the prices for parts was at the top of the range. I experimented with buying other brands as a one off cost saving. Now I am planning from four to eight watering zones and the most expensive component is available in a four pack at a big price reduction. The Toro range now fits without costing too much more.
Some of the other brands have bulk packs of six or eight or ten items. I will never use ten. If I buy six and need another pack, I end up with 12. Buying a four pack today and another four pack in a few months fits my time frame while keeping costs down.
Some of the Toro components fit nicely together exactly the way I need. Some of the other brands have components that are a couple of dollars cheaper but need weird assembly. I do not have the experience to use them and do not want to learn that part. Some brands need lots of adaptors for everything and the adpators cost more than the difference between that brand and the Toro parts.
Before you commit to a brand, ask in the shop how you fit stuff together. If one brand is too fiddly, choose a simpler brand. A good result will be easier and more reliable.
Plan all the parts. As mentioned above with the bulk packs, buying exactly what you need might be cheaper in one brand. You can mix different brands when they are at different ends of a plastic irrigation pipe because the pipe and pipe fittings are standardised. What is not so easy to match up are things like the irrigation valves and the manifolds they are attached to.
Mixing brands might also create installation problems when they need different spanners and tightening pressures. What works for one brand, might break another by being too tight or might produce leaks from joints not tight enough.
Mixing brands is easier if you use one brand for your front garden and a different brand for your back garden. If the first system is easy to install and reliable, stick to the same brand. Switch to a different brand if the first one is difficult or unreliable.
Building your own irrigation controller is the most difficult part for most people. Using a ready made system can have serious limitations. Look at ready made devices in the shops. Ask questions. When you narrow down the choices, look online and download the instruction manuals. The can be great reading. that is where you find out the product with "Eight watering zones" in big letters on the front of the box is restricted to only four watering schedules.
Do you have a friend with a brand new latest design installed? Their experience may be misleading. Look for people who have a garden similar to you. If you grow flowers and vegetables, you want a gardener who has flowers and vegetables. Look for someone who has used their system for at least a year, during hot summer winds and soaking wet storms.
When?
Building your own irrigation system takes time. What is your time worth? You might be better off working on something else and paying someone to perform the physical work.
You can build a system with a ready made controller or build your own controller. Again there is the time factor. Building your own controller is a nice hobby project for people interested in electronics or computers or programming. For most other people, there is a lot of time chewed up learning how to do each part of the project.
When you are digging garden beds and planting things, you can lay irrigation pipe at the same time. You might dig in compost then lay a drip line then sprinkle on the mulch. I choose to leave the drip lines on top for easier checking of coverage and less chance something will block a drip hole.
Are you looking at a hot summer arriving next week? You are unlikely to install your own system fast enough to protect your plants. Either give priority to watering the most sensitive plants first or hire help to install the full system.
Are you going overseas next week? Irrigation system failures occur in the first few days of use then the first full blast of hot weather. You need to be watching your garden through both. If not, pay for installation and to have the installer chack the system while you are away.
Where?
Your home is a unique microclimate different to everywhere else and parts of your garden will have their own microclimate. You want the best irrigation for you most valuable plants.
In my area, hills block weather in three directions and the fourth brings weather straight in off the ocean. The nearest weather measuring station can report air temperatures up to six degrees different to our house. Rain may hit us on an officially dry day and many officially wet days do not include rain on our garden. Our house needs local measurement of soil maisture.
Our front garden gets strong sun most of the day and the rest of the garden is mainly in shade. Two microclimates.
I need wet tropical soil where I grow ginger and drier soil for my Australian native plants. Citrus are shallow rooted, requiring testing of soil moisture near the surface. Other plants need the moisture up to a metre down in the soil and will rot if watered the same as my lemon trees. More microclimates. I am allowing for up to eight watering xones.
Why?
I like looking at electronics and machinery to understand how it works. When I am in a shop selling irrigation, I may look at devices to see what they do and how. For me, it is an easy and fun step to laying out a design for my irrigation system.
I have used ready made irrigation systems in previous locations and crashed into the limitations of ready made. I am ready to build something better and there are heaps of documented projects showing components I can use. I am mostly bringing together stuff that other people tested.
I enjoy the work, both the labour in the garden and the electronics required for building a controller. I did waste time on some really cheap parts to keep the overall cost low and have now found ways to buy the better parts, time saving parts, at a reasonable cost.
I now have lots of plants growing through critical stages and a log hot summer ahead. The plant mix is too varied to depend on a generic irrigation system.
Way?
You can pay a professional to install an irrigation system and, in many cases, will find it too expensive for a home system. Some installers will install what they like, not what you want, if you do not understand irrigation systems to a point where you can have a useful discussion with the installer.
It is similar to taking a car in for repair. you say there is a strange noise in the back of the car. You can be male, female, young or old. Some repair people will tell you it is thousands of dollars work to replace the back suspension. If, instead, you ask some people who know cars, get their opinion and learn the terminology, you can walk into repairers and say the noise sounds like a wheel out of alignment. the repair is only a hundred dollars.
Talk with people. Read articles. Look at the products in shops. Learn the terminology. Walk around your garden thinking about the plants you want and the sprinklers or drips watering them. You are ready to discuss quotes with installers and might be ready to do it yourself.
Worth?
Some of my plants are from a previous house where rare Australian natives grew wild. To buy a small pot with a tiny specimen can be $50. My big plants would be closer to $500 and I have several. The cost of setting up a separate watering zone for them is about $50 when not counting my labour. I decided the extra work is a good investment.
What is your garden worth? I bet your garden is more valuable than doing nothing about irrigation. Irrigation also frees you up to travel during hot weather. You are not stuck at home watering the plants. The whole calculation might be different if you have friends or family or neighbours helping you in return for you helping them. You might enjoy spending an hour every day watering the plants.
I have friends with ready made systems installed. They enjoy what they use. In most cases, they had the experience to know what they wanted. In some cases, it was luck or the installer was a garden designer.
I also hear reports of disasters where the installer used the wrong system and adding extra bits is too expensive. Of cases where a builder subcontracted for the cheapest possible work and it fails. Of cases where the installer disappears. Of cases where the irrigation was set up for something completely different to the plants in the garden.
My experiments with cheaper components cost about $100 and in most cases gave me a quick fix watering system while I worked on the full design. There was one disaster when an economy hose was left on while I was away, the hose burst, and a neighbour had to turn the tap off.
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