Low pressure sprinklers for a dripper system

Drippers are great at targeting the water needs of individual plants but the soil and mulch in between can easy dry out. That usually requires hand watering which, while fun and allows you to check out the garden in detail, is time consuming.

Sprinklers on the hose is the obvious answer but that requires extra pressure, so you can’t run the drippers at the same time.

I gave it some thought and went for a look in our Gawler Mitre 10 hardware store.

As I poked around the watering section I came upon replacement heads for the wobble head sprinklers. We have one of these sprinklers and like it a lot. They can run on unpumped tank pressure as low as 5 psi. Their heavy drips and irregular delivery, thanks to the wobble, mimic heavy rain drops and penetrate foliage layers.

I found there were several sizes so grabbed the smallest as each only has to cover about 5 square metres.

The next question was how to adjust the pressure to each sprinkler? There was nothing in the irrigation section that would suit without using polypipe and I was worried that would be too flexible. I found a 15mm ball valve in the plumbing section that screwed nicely onto the riser.

Then a 15mm female threaded to 19mm barbed offtake finished the job by allowing the assembly to join with the polypipe dripper system.

Parts list

• Wobble head sprinkler replacement head
• Riser long enough for your needs
• 15mm threaded ball valve
• 15 mm female threaded to 19 mm barbed off take
• Lots of that amazing white plumber’s tape.

The tape was necessary because the thread on the ball valve is slightly different to the thread on the riser. Wind it on until leaks stop.