PLEASE NOTE: This is a *VERY BASIC* guide to irrigation design! We have tried to make this as simple as possible, but in doing so can only cover the very basics. You should consult with a professional to ensure the system will meet your needs.
1) Draw the Kisss pipes onto the plan.
- If your land has more than a gentle slope (eg. 5%) you will need to install the Kisss irrigation lines across the slope (rather than up/down the slope, ie. along the contour of the slope). This prevents the water in the pipes from draining out at the end of the irrigation cycle and forming wet patches at the bottom of the slope.
- As a rule of thumb, Kisss lines should generally be installed at 0.6 m spacings when using the wrap product. (So on your plan, every 6 mm)
- Wherever possible, make the Kisss lines as long as possible. i.e. run your lines parallel to the longest boundary, rather than the shorter one. This minimises the number of connections you will need to make later.
- Now that you have your Kisss lines marked onto your plan, it is time to work out how many meters of Kisss you will need. Using your ruler you can quickly add up how many meters of Kisss pipe you will need. To do this, simply place your ruler on one of the Kisss runs on your plan and note down how many cm it is. Then using our scale of 1 cm = 1 m convert the length from your plan into a real life length, and continue doing this for every line. On our example the runs near the tap are 7.5 cm each on paper, so in real life that is 7.5 m; we will need a total of 372m (Two full 200m rolls with 28m to spare.)
2) Determine water supply flow rate.
- You will need a bucket of a known capacity, and a stopwatch (Most mobile phones will have one).
- To perform a flow test: turn on the tap that you will use to supply water to your Kisss, and after the tap is on full, place the bucket under the water flow and time exactly how long it takes to fill your bucket. The flow rate will be the number of litres in your bucket, divided by how many seconds it took to fill to the top, then times by 60. Eg. We used a 10 litre bucket and it took exactly 20 seconds to fill. 10 divided by 20 is 0.5, then times by 60 is 28.8 litres per minute.
3) Check adequacy of water supply and create zones if necessary.
- Depending on the flow rates it is sometimes necessary to split up your irrigation into smaller sections. These smaller sections are called "Zones". Unless you are trying to irrigate a very large area with a very small water supply you will more than likely not need any more than 1 zone. If possible, it is much simpler to just use only one zone.
- Now it is time to check the flow rates. To find the required flow rate of your Kisss system: Multiply the number of metres of Kisss pipe by the (per meter) flow rate of the Kisss pipe (2.50, 4.00, 6.00), and then divide that answer by 60. Eg. We are using 372m X 4.00 (Loamy soil) = 1488, now divide by 60 = 24.8 litres per minute. This is the minimum required flow rate of the water supply. Because our water supply can supply more (30 litres per minute) than the minimum required rate (24.8 litres per minute), we will not need more than one zone on our system.
- If there are areas that you would like to water separately (ie a rockery) but you don't think it's worth the expense of using an electric solenoid and timer, you can use an inline valve instead. Where and how you connect it will depend on what you are wanting to achieve.
4) Draw your header and footer pipes.
- A Header pipe is a 25mm low density polyethylene pipe that feeds the water into the Kisss pipes. Think of it as a "Mains" pipe. One end of each Kisss pipe will be connected into it. The Header pipe is marked in BLUE in the diagram at the bottom of the page.
- A Footer pipe is again a 25mm low density polly pipe. It is connected to the other end of your Kisss lines. This gives the system the capacity to be flushed out periodically. The Footer pipe is marked in RED in the diagram at the bottom of the page. You will notice that the footer pipes are not all connected together, this is just to simplify the install. The purpose of the footer pipe is to act as collector for the water flowing through the Kisss pipes - at the end of each footer section is a tap. Every so often you will need to open the taps and flush the system, but in normal operation you leave the taps closed to force the water to exit through the drippers in the Kisss pipe. You can read more about this in the maintenance section.
Our Design:
- Water source flow rate - 30 Litres/minute
- Kisss required flow rate - 24.8 Litres/minute
- Soil type: loamy soil
- KISSS pipe: 2 rolls (400m) of BFW400 13mm
(To print a scale copy of this plan, click on the picture and it will open full size in Adobe Acrobat. Click the printer icon. Look for an option called "Page scaling" and change it to "Tile large pages")
