Juli Lawrence – Rakish Gardening

September 1st, 2007

Good tutorial on installing soaker hoses and any kind of irrigation system.

The regulator and filter I ordered did arrive, but turned out it was sitting at our mailbox at the UPS store we use. It had been there two weeks!

That’s not the Drip Store’s fault, although they really shouldn’t be putting two addresses on the shipping box. The fault lies with the post office, which apparently can’t read SHIP TO. One of these days I really need to let go with a big harangue about the US post office. But I’ll save that for another day and a different website. This site is for gardening mostly, not my rants.

All of our financial stuff, credit card statements, etc., go to a private mailbox (not a PO box) at a UPS store. Several reasons for that, but most importantly hubby, CPA and financial analyst, is paranoid about identity theft and doesn’t like the idea of mail sitting in a mailbox for thieves. So billing address for a credit card is different than our home address, and sometimes I even use a friend’s address to ship stuff if we’re not going to be home.

Years ago I sent one of those cheese/salami packages to a friend out of state for Christmas, they left it with her neighbor while she was at work, and the neighbor apparently ate it. Oh, the neighbor said it was spoiled and she tossed it. Um, yeah. That’s why I don’t shop Swiss Colony anymore, because they gave me a lot of grief about replacing it. And I advise people to avoid Swiss Colony.

Anyway….steering off topic here. I promised myself I would not rant on this blog, unless it’s a rant about cucumber beetles.

So the Drip Store put both billing and shipping addresses on the box, but it WAS clearly marked SHIP TO with some kind of UPC code that clearly stated where to ship to. And yet, the postal service mucked it up.

But I have the parts now and am getting ready to install today. This sure turned out to be a lot more complicated than I ever dreamed. Hardly the “buy a roll of bulk soaker hose and some connectors” and hook it up.

The truth is, it’s worth it because it has made watering life so much easier, and frankly, a lot healthier for the plants. They have loved that deep soaking as opposed to me standing around with a watering wand and shallow soaking. It’s also nice to turn it on, set a timer and forget it. I did not buy an attachable timer. I use the microwave timer for everything!

So now I have: hose spigot/backflow valve/heavy-duty pressure regulator/huge contraption of a filter to keep the crud out of the hose. As long as I was ordering from the Drip Store, figured I might as well spend the extra 10 bucks and get that too, given that in addition to super heavy water pressure, we have a lot of ick stuff in our water.

It’s a lot of contraptions on the hose spigot and next year I’m going to even expand it more. The plan is to buy a roll of plastic tubing and interconnect all my soakers hoses with that tubing buried under the turf. At the spigot, I’ll have one of those splitter deals, with a regular hose running off one, and all the contraptions for the soaker hose system on the other. That way I can still have a regular hose for the watering can.

I’m looking forward to that. As it is now, I hook up the garden hose to the start of the soaker hose in one garden, do the time, then repeat on the next garden. It’s just another time saver to have it all connected, plus it’s kind of cool.

I really wouldn’t have considered all of this had it not been for Paul James and his HGTV gardening show. He was the one who kept impressing on me that it’s better to do once a week deep soaking instead of every other day shallow watering. And last summer, during the real heat, I was spending an hour to two hours a day standing around watering with the hose and water wand.

I guess considering the adventure with the water pressure reader and various doodads I’ve bought, the eleven dollars it was gonna cost ran up to about 30-40 dollars total. But still, I consider it a worthy investment.

BTW, the Drip Store is really nice, good customer service, and their prices are the best. On top of it, if you’re just wanting to order a little doohickey, they don’t kill you with shipping and handling like most places. They will use priority mail or even first class mail…if you’re willing to chance it with the post office. I was and am aggravated at the post office, but that’s not the Drip Store’s fault. I just really appreciate not getting hosed (pun intended) for shipping and handling for a change.

I recommend the Drip Store and I will very likely order my plastic tubing from them next year….plus whatever other crazy doodads I think I might need.

I should add that their sales guy was very helpful in helping me figure out which filter to buy and didn’t steer me towards the most expensive.

• Soaker hoses and water pressure
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Tags: soaker hoses
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