Irrigation Adelaide

Garden irrigation is a dripper or pop-up sprinkler system, run on a timer, that waters your garden beds and lawn automatically and evenly, instead of relying on manual watering or a system with dead zones and leaks.

With spiralling water costs and our residential water consumption usage under the microscope, it makes sense to be as efficient with water as possible when watering our gardens.

Irrigation installers from Hand Made Gardens have over 45 years experience installing a wide range of watering systems, whether it be an automated pop-up sprinkler system for your lawn using rotor sprinklers or drippers for garden beds.

A backflow prevention device is required by SA Water on any irrigation system connected to mains water. It stops garden water, which can pick up fertiliser or soil pathogens, from siphoning back into the drinking water supply if mains pressure drops. It's a legal requirement rather than an optional extra, and it's fitted as standard on every new system we install.

On a Glen Osmond garden makeover, new drip irrigation was run back to Hunter solenoid valves and tied into the client's existing Rainbird controller rather than replacing it outright. The old system was repaired and checked for leaks first, since reusing a sound existing controller and simply extending the zones is often cheaper than ripping everything out and starting again.

Thanks to technological advances, automated irrigation systems Adelaide home owners can have installed by licensed landscapers from Hand Made Gardens make sure you never forget to water your plants, but perhaps more importantly, the plants only receive the water they need, even if you're away on holiday. Hard wired controllers can be set up to handle different irrigation zones, turning on at different times of the day and at a different daily frequency. With smart phone connectivity, you can also have complete control over watering your plants and lawn in the palm of your hand, from anywhere your phone works across the world.

Zoning is what makes a system actually work well rather than just exist. Lawn needs more water, more often, than an established garden bed, and a sunny north-facing bed dries out faster than a shaded southern corner. Running all of it off one zone means overwatering the parts that don't need it just to satisfy the parts that do. A properly zoned system groups plants with similar water needs onto the same run time, which is what actually delivers the water savings the FAQ below talks about, rather than just moving the problem around.

A patchy or dying section of lawn is usually an irrigation problem before it's a soil or grass problem: a blocked or misaligned sprinkler head, a split poly pipe from tree roots, or a solenoid valve stuck open or shut all show up as a dry or boggy patch rather than anything more obvious. Fixing the actual cause is usually cheaper and faster than re-turfing the same spot every year.

Adelaide's climate means a controller's run times need adjusting through the year, not set once and left. A summer schedule left running through a mild Adelaide autumn or winter wastes water and can actually drown plants that don't need anything like as much. Smart controllers with weather-based adjustment handle this automatically; a standard controller just needs the program checked each season.

Irrigation FAQ