Tag: Irrigation Systems

Environmental campaigns and even considerations are uplifting the use of green roofs. As opposed to hard construction materials such as tiles, green roofs are known to more importantly lower the rainwater run-off hence lowering flood problems. Complex rooftop irrigation systems are capable of holding up to about 90% of the rainwater and also even the thinnest complex green roof system holds up to 40% of the rainwater.

Alongside that, the remaining 60% of the rainwater is more likely to run off rather slowly as compared to when on a conventional roof. Green roofs are also known to offer important cover in lowering heat transfers and even reduction of noise.

Besides increasing diversity, offering a habitat for both the animals and even plants, all green roofs are most likely to heighten air quality by filtering airborne dust particles and even other pollutants. All green roof design is simply the compromise of offering both the plants and grass adequate soil to thrive unattended and also ensuring the roof weight is down.

Since the soil possesses a high density, the price for making roof structures goes up based on the more depth of soil needed. With that in place, several designs are more likely to embrace the use of the minimum amount of soil and even special mixes involving compost to lower the weight.

From a horticultural point of view, a shallow depth and the exposed aspect make the soil dry up very fast resulting to plant stress and even failure. Types of green roof irrigation systems and their organization. There are only two basic types of green roof design.

Intensive roof systems

This kind of system is always used where an accessible garden environment is needed. Structures that include water features, planters, benching, and also trees are all included in this design.

Here, the soil depth is always deeper making it a necessity for the roof structure to be stronger to withstand the extra weight. Again, complete maintenance is needed with this kind of design since a more varied plant type is always used.

Extensive roof systems

This is always initiated whenever the environmental benefits of a green roof are needed. Sedums that are also known as low growing drought resistible plants are pre-sewn into a blanket are always used more so due to their high tolerance and also their lightweight construction.

Alongside all that, they also need slight maintenance hence are seen to be cheap when it comes to maintenance.

Irrigation methods

These will always depend based on the application among other aspects; however, there are two main types. They include:

1. Sprinklers

They are always used in intensive roof systems. When the roof depths are extremely shallow, supply pipework is placed on the gravel margin or even on raised beds across all the edges found in the lawn.

The ancient lawn-based sprinklers of the pop-up kind are always situated around the outer perimeter in the grass area, spraying all the way to the lawn area. These kinds of sprinklers are known to have amazing coverage and can also be used to spray the grass on their earlier days when laid.

As for the lawns that have greater soil depth, the pop-up sprinklers can be perfectly placed into the lawn area, and they will then work in the same way as sprinklers in an ancient lawn.

2. Driplines

For extensive green roofs, they are always equipped with a dripline system that directly targets the root zone. You also need to be aware that it should not be installed when the green roof is being installed.

A special dripline is always used, where it is made to move all the way to the root zone – and also several ordinary drip pipes will always clog when used to perform such kinds of operations. Original individual drippers also come along with a compensation device built to ensure that, even if the roof elevates, each of the drippers is capable of offering a similar amount of water.

Driplines are also laid below the soil surface at the root level. Based on application, driplines are laid along the roof in lines that have 300 to 400m intervals. As for the Sedum blankets, two lines of dripline are always the only requirements for wetting the capillary kind of matting and not the sedums – one above the slope and also another one halfway down.

For intensive roof gardens that planters or even shrub borders are placed, they all have to be dealt with using the driplines that are placed on the surface (usually beneath mulch) of the bed. When it happens that there are pots and even urns in the roof area, they can be watered through individual drippers found in each of the pots.

3. Pressurization and control units

Due to the irrigation location such as high level, a pressurized water supply will be needed so that water can be evenly distributed. Water regulations always need a kind of ‘A’ air brake on all of the irrigation systems. That can be derived from a compatible pressurized supply within a given building or even a dedicated built pressurization unit.

The latter is always pre-assembled and also has a built-in water storage tank equipped with an air gap, controller, and also pressure pump. This unit is always situated in a pump room at a lower level. Copper or MDPE pipework is always moved from its location all the way to the roof level.

All that is needed here is a mains water and 230v power supply as an additional requirement. The controller can always be programmed to conduct the irrigation automatically either daily, or even weekly for a certain period of time and it can also be manually operated whenever a need be.

The extra sensor can also be placed whenever needed – this will simply reduce or even prevent watering whenever it rains.

A few tips for creating a green rooftop irrigation system

Below is a list and descriptions of some of the tips or considerations that you need to keep in mind when creating a green roof irrigation system:

Weight considerations

You need to rest assured that all of the things that you have built on your roof are perfectly supported. To do avoid problems from this, you need to prevent concentrating much of the weight on small areas through the use of wood and even PVC frames that are capable of spreading the weight across a larger area.

Be informed that when you fail to enforce proper support, there are higher chances of your roof leaking or even collapsing leading to an expensive fix the damage.

When to water

Regardless of the mechanism that you use, there is always a given time for watering. You need to know that no matter what, you should not water your plants in the middle of the day since it will only make them wilt or even burn.

The best time that you may adopt for watering your plants is usually 3 hours immediately after the sunrise and also 3 hours before the sunset. When you stay in areas that are very dry, then, the best time for watering your plants needs to be during the evening since it offers plants and the soil adequate time to absorb the water before it evaporates.

Homemade irrigation

You can always choose to use the rolled tubing to build a simple irrigation system. You can also channel the drainage to a central recycling vessel where it is strained and then pumped back to the plants.

Debris that is sifted can also be evenly distributed above the rooftop garden. Embrace a cheaper pump to bring about water distribution, and also set it on a common wall timer.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to make rooftop lawn?

To create a rooftop lawn, follow these steps:

• Check the structural integrity: Ensure that your rooftop can support the weight of a lawn. Consult with a structural engineer if needed.
• Install a waterproof membrane: Apply a waterproof layer to prevent water leakage into the building. This is crucial to protect the structure.
• Build a drainage system: Install a proper drainage system to prevent water pooling. Use drainage mats, perforated pipes, and a waterproofing membrane to facilitate water runoff.
• Choose appropriate soil and grass: Select lightweight soil or soilless media that promotes drainage. Choose grass varieties suitable for rooftop conditions, such as drought-tolerant and low-maintenance species.

Remember to consider local regulations, seek professional advice, and maintain the lawn regularly to ensure its longevity and health.

2. Do roof sprinklers work?

Roof sprinklers can be effective in certain situations. They can help cool the roof surface and reduce the risk of fire spreading in wildfire-prone areas. Roof sprinklers work by wetting the roof and surrounding areas, creating a moisture barrier.

However, their effectiveness depends on factors such as water availability, system design, and maintenance. It’s important to consult with fire experts and local authorities to determine if roof sprinklers are appropriate and effective for your specific location and circumstances.

Regular testing and maintenance are crucial to ensure their functionality when needed.

3. What is the necessity of irrigation?

Irrigation is necessary for plant health, agriculture, and landscape maintenance. It provides a reliable water supply during dry periods, promoting optimal growth.

It enables crop cultivation in regions with limited rainfall, increasing food production. Additionally, irrigation keeps lawns and gardens hydrated, preventing wilting and maintaining attractive outdoor spaces.

Irrigation plays an integral role in our crop growth, health, and productivity. Yet, we often give little attention to it. We give utmost priority to pests and weed control, fertilizers application, crop monitoring, soil analysis, etc.

Good, but those amendments without irrigation are like fueling a car without starting the engine; It won’t move. The same is applicable here. Other practices will only be efficient when proper irrigation is in place.

Irrigated land produces abundant and higher yield crops when compared to dryland. Statistically, 17% of irrigated agriculture produces 40% of the global food. Irrigation improves yields, enhances profitable harvest, and helps soil structure if it is done perfectly.

Due to variability in soil types and crop requirement of water, doing manual irrigation on your crops may be overwhelming and nerve-wracking especially if it’s a large farm. To ease this process, a cutting-edge technology called VRI (Variable Rate Irrigation) is introduced.

Some important Facts About Variable-Rate Irrigation

It was initially introduced to aid large-scale farming in the early 2000s. Nowadays, variable rate irrigation is used on any type of farm because of the problems of unforeseeable rainfall patterns, variation of soil type and crop conditions, and the need to fast-track useful management decisions concerning nutrients and water.

What is Variable Rate Irrigation?

It’s an innovative technology that distributes water to plants at the right amount and at the right interval to satisfy the plant’s demand for water.

Since the water requirement of plants and soil varies, VRI permits the Central Pivot irrigation system, using GPS (Global Positioning System) and GIS (Geographic Information System) technologies to determine the specific amounts of water to be applied to each area of ​​the land.

Applying water uniformly to a field can make some areas watery while some will be dehydrated. Through VRI, you can supply water to every region of your farm without over-watering or under-watering the land. Although using it promises efficient use of water, it doesn’t necessarily mean little water will be consumed.

Components of a Variable rate irrigation System

A VRI system has the pivot irrigation system incorporated with the following characteristics;
Sprinkler control valves that spray water according to the instructions given by the control signal.
A Global Positioning System that tells us the position of the system within the field.

A user interface that finishes the field mapping and establishes the system. A controller that instructs or directs each sprinkler or all of the sprinklers. Also, It can be used to change the acceleration of the irrigation.

How does variable-rate irrigation reduce climate-related risks?

By implementing a VRI system, there are two ways to optimize water consumption on your farm. Firstly, by allocating a substantial amount of the water to soil with low holding-water capacity while leaving out areas without crops.

Secondly, lowering water application in marginal areas that require little irrigation or soil with high retention capacity e.g clay soil. A report by (Sadler et al. 2005) suggests that it has saved up 8 – 20% in water usage more than uniform irrigation.

With a VRI system in place, irrigated plants are less prone to climate-related risks because they are well-watered which arise owing to proper management of water thereby making plants unaffected by drought.

Benefits of VRI on Agriculture and Production

Since its water consumption is lower than the uniform irrigation, It saves cost by reducing the amount spent on water usage and pumping.

It aids yield and productivity improvement due to the irresistible nature of irrigated crops against pests and disease and other crop-related issues

It minimizes nutrient loss in soil by leaching and improves soil health. Since it controls leaching, soil salinity conditions and drainage is strengthened.

What are the Barriers to Implementation?

Inadequate knowledge about the system and lengthy period used in learning how to operate the system.

Maintenance cost – employment of labor for troubleshooting and repair. Additional costs on other field equipment are needed for the system to function such as buying in-field sensors and data processing fees. Sometimes, farmers may have difficulty adjusting to improvements in the system.

How does it work?

While demand for food production has highly increased over years, the need for proper irrigation in agriculture is more than what a man can comprehend. The need for a better water management system prompts the introduction of VRI (variable-rate irrigation).

It has aided modern agriculture in various ways. It’s an automated technology that uses a central pivot irrigation system to supply water to plants at the demanded rate. It is recommended a minimum of four zones control the VRI section.

Zones are created automatically and manually with the help of 30-year history imagery of soil (agrochemical analysis, scanners data, EC, moisture), and topography data.

GeoPard helps you properly distribute the agricultural inputs such as fertilizing, crop protection, seeding, irrigation, etc. for better crop yield.

More than a billion gallons of water are utilized each day in the United States for landscape irrigation. A large portion of the water utilized is squandered due to overwatering because of conventional wasteful Irrigation systems. To successfully battle this issue, Smart Irrigation systems are the solution.

What is smart irrigation?

Smart irrigation systems for farming modify timings and schedule of watering automatically to accomplish specific soil needs. These systems increase water use efficiencies significantly.

The conventional irrigation systems used to work on a set programmed schedule with preset timers, whereas smart water system frameworks screen a variety of variables, for example, soil conditions, weather, plant water use, and evaporation to change watering plans.

This increases efficiency while additionally keeping up with soil wellbeing.

How do irrigation controllers work?

At the point when there is an increase in outside temperature or an absence of rainfall, smart watering controllers consider explicit factors, for example, sprinkler throw rate and soil type to modify watering plans.

There are a few features of smart irrigation control frameworks that can be utilized to accomplish efficiency and conserve water. Smart watering systems for farming are created to irrigate in view of the water necessity of the plant, this maximizes efficiency while older traditional irrigation systems used to work with preset timings squandering a lot of water.

Smart irrigation systems are available as all-inclusive complete systems as well as separate controllers which can be added to existing systems to upgrade them to smart irrigation systems.

As these controllers come in an assortment of designs, they can be optimized for specific uses. They can be introduced to irrigate little, residential landscapes as well as enormous regions with fluctuating landscapes.

Although these frameworks are automated, because of changes in certain elements, they should be monitored and adjusted occasionally to keep up with efficiency and guarantee appropriate working.

How does smart irrigation system for farming work?

Smart watering systems work by gathering information from various sensors and analyzing it to make changes in water timings and water streams. These frameworks work by some predefined user information sources like moisture threshold.

The system gathers information from a moisture sensor, then, at that point, analyzes it to decide whether the moisture limit set by the client is reached, if it has, it relays the order to actuators which then turn the sprinklers off.

Moreover, the client can likewise control the framework by means of a smartphone application on the go. The framework can likewise change schedules by breaking down weather information and can likewise decide when it is ideal to water to keep the plants healthy.

Features of Smart Irrigation

1. Water system Scheduling

Planning a get-away? With smart water irrigation, you can set how the system functions ahead of time. scheduling proves to be useful with these systems.

While the frameworks screen and control the water system of the landscape, you can find peace of mind realizing that you will get back to a landscape filled up with healthy plants. You can buy systems with specific features which suit your scheduling needs.

2. Remote Control

While individuals are reluctant to buy systems that work off of smartphone applications as they are not satisfied with applications, these frameworks have progressed significantly, as with most current gadgets, these frameworks additionally have a consistent network and give extraordinary connection through Wi-Fi and different means.

Assuming you are OK with a legitimate handheld gadget, there are systems that come with a physical remote that you can use for your convenience. The controllers come equipped with LED lights to indicate if the system is working or what mode it is working in.

The controller with a smartphone application additionally provides you with the component of controlling it from anywhere you are with the assistance of the application.

You can tweak the water system all through various landscapes by utilizing custom presets over valves inundating various sorts of plants. You can make zones with one or numerous valves giving you control to customize the water system over various regions.

3. Notifications

With smart water system frameworks, you can get advised of essentially whatever happens to the landscape. You will get notified when the irrigation begins and when it stops.

The framework tells you if there is an error in the water system, a few systems additionally let you know whether there is leakage in your water system framework. Find the controller which best suits your needs and has the features that you require.

4. Smarter Irrigation

A few regulators come furnished with weather monitoring which can change irrigation schedules in advance assuming it is expected to rain. This way you don’t have to stress over your plants getting over-watered, and don’t need to physically switch off the framework.

5. Inoperability

Although significant enhancements have been made to improve these frameworks, at this point most economically accessible frameworks can’t connect with smart home gateways and other smart home gadgets.

There are models available which do come equipped with connectivity ability, but they are limited as of now. Organizations are chipping away at this next step and soon you can hope to see most if not all these systems are equipped with smart home connectivity.

Before you buy a smart irrigation system for farming, you need to research what sort of eccentricities and features you need in your system. These systems are customizable, and you can find one to be as per your necessities and your spending plans.

There are a few controllers which incorporate every one of the extravagant features yet they are on the more costly side and you probably won’t need that number of features, so research a little prior to settling on a purchasing choice.

Benefits of Smart Watering Systems

Smart irrigation systems use sensors and real-time weather information to expand efficiency which was a major issue with conventional irrigation control systems that can squander up to half of the water used.

These frameworks likewise give better plant care as they can detect soil moisture and keep up with it for the best plant wellbeing.

There are two fundamental parts of the smart irrigation frameworks. There is an irrigation control type and a delivery type. The delivery type involves the sort of water delivery framework utilized.

The system additionally works off of two distinct kinds of analytic inputs, there is the soil-based system and the weather-based system. These frameworks direct the working of the entire unit.

The soil-based irrigation systems work off of tangible information given by an assortment of sensors inside the ground which is broken down to make decisions about the time and volume of irrigation required.

These sensors incorporate moisture sensors among different sensors, these systems can be set to detect moisture limits set by the client for specific kinds of plants that can be customized by plant type over an enormous landscape.

While the system works to reach the threshold, it can likewise identify soil moisture in specific conditions and irrigate areas differently if some pieces of land get more direct sunlight and require more water.

The weather-based smart watering systems work on analyzing the weather data from reliable weather sources, historical data, and sensors to make decisions about watering schedules.

A weather-based irrigation framework is otherwise called an ET framework or an evapotranspiration framework, as it recognizes and counters for loss of water from the land through evaporation or plant transpiration.

The watering schedule for a weather-based system accounts for a variety of factors to make a decision, for example, local temperature, wind, humidity, and the insolation state of the landscape.

Probably the best benefit of the smart irrigation system for farming is that it additionally helps increase the efficiency in the delivery frameworks for watering. There are 4 common ways of water delivery in smart watering systems: surface, subsurface, stream, and sprinklers.

Traditionally, the surface water system is the most commonly utilized strategy, it has been broadly utilized all through the world, and it includes the utilization of little trenches and streams on a surface level to deliver water with the assistance of gravity.

Sprinklers toss water in the air with high pressure, so it reaches greater distances and distributes water among the plants like rain. Sprinklers can be fixed on the ground or can be in mobile arrangements.
Trickle irrigation works by installing networks of water lines locally through plants, which then drip water very slowly keeping the plants moist over longer periods of time while conserving water.

Subsurface irrigation works by burying water lines close to plant roots throughout the landscape, which provides water directly to the plant roots below the surface. This method is known to maximize the efficiency of water use, as being buried in the ground it is not prone to water evaporation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to irrigate soil?

To irrigate soil effectively, there are a few essential steps to follow. Begin by assessing the water needs of your plants, considering factors such as their specific requirements and environmental conditions.

Next, select the appropriate irrigation method, taking into account factors like the size of the area and available resources. Water at the optimal time to minimize evaporation, typically early morning or late evening.

Finally, ensure even water distribution across the soil surface or root zone. Regular monitoring and adjustments will help maintain effective soil irrigation.

2. What is the example of subsurface irrigation?

An example of subsurface irrigation is the use of buried drip lines or drip tubing. In this method, perforated pipes or tubes are installed beneath the soil surface, delivering water directly to the root zone of plants.

The water seeps out slowly and evenly, minimizing evaporation and reducing water loss. Subsurface irrigation is commonly used in agriculture, landscapes, and gardens to provide efficient and targeted watering while minimizing surface runoff and evaporation.

It helps conserve water and promotes healthy plant growth.