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Did you know that one spray head or rotor watering your flowerbeds or turf grass can have an output of up to eight gallons of water per minute?

In contrast, flowerbed and/or foundation drip systems put out as low as .4 gallons of water per hour–per drip emitter. The result: Huge savings to your bottom line!

How is it possible our clients can use so much less water, 60% to 80% less to be exact; but continue to provide adequate watering to precious plants and to the homes foundation? It’s simple really – a drip irrigation system has many benefits which allow for less water usage resulting in tremendous savings to your watering bill, and at the same time providing ample moisture for the flowerbed and foundation of your home. Drip is not only efficient (getting water directly to the roots), but it’s also cost effective; providing a full return on your drip system investment “ROI” in 6 to 12 Months!

We did the Math. Here is a conservative example of how it works:

Let’s say for example; your flowerbeds have a total length of 100 feet. Your spray heads in the flowerbed are only spraying out 1 gallon a minute of water (on the low end). You have a total of 8 heads/riser sticks watering the flowerbed. Therefore when you water the flowerbed you are using 8 gallons of water per minute. If you typically water that zone for 15 minutes, you have used a full 120 gallons of water. If you water twice a week, you’re now using 240 gallons of water to water your flowerbed zone.

Now, with a flowerbed drip system installed by Wet Willie’s, and using the same 100 feet example for simplicity; the drip tubing would need to be a length of 400 feet to cover 100 feet of flowerbed. It would contain a total of 400 individual drip holes or “emitters” spaced 1 foot apart. These emitters would “drip” out .4 gallons of water per hour out of each emitter. Multiplying the number (400 emitters) times the .4 gallons per hour that each emitter puts out – equals to using 160 gallons of water per hour.

To break that down into gallons per minute such as each sprinkler spray head is measured, it’s 160/60 = 2.66 gallons per minute. Running the flowerbed as a drip zone at the same rate – twice a week for 15 minutes, you are now only using 2.66 x 15 x 2 = 80 gallons! That’s 240 gallons with spray heads versus 80 gallons with drip irrigation. It’s a 66.6% savings of water every week! Just think if you dripped all of your flowerbeds. How about removing your foundation spray heads and dripping your homes foundation. As you can see not only is a flowerbed or foundation drip system a great savings of water and money, but it also provides the following benefits:

• Watering Restriction Exemptions: Drip systems are exempt from all City watering restrictions. You can water as often as you want.
• Weed Prevention: Drip lines water directly at the plant roots. This prevents unwanted seeds from receiving the needed moisture to germinate and spread, thus preventing weed growth to flowerbeds and gardens. In effect, it starves your weeds.
• Runoff and Evaporation are eliminated, leading to even less water usage.
• Foundation Enhancement: Drip systems can solve shifting and settlement issues along your homes foundation. Water is spread out evenly and is absorbed at the proper rate providing the moisture to “soak” into the soil at the optimum precipitation rate and thereby protect the movement of your slab and your most valuable investment.
• Efficiency: Drip is 90% efficient. It keeps your soil evenly moist, provides a better application rate, uniform distribution of water, and a slow – much improved absorption (deep percolation) for plants and foundations in our high clay Texas soils.
• Versatility: Flowerbed lines can be easily moved and re-stapled as you plant new bushes and flowers, giving you the flexibility to continually update your landscaped areas.
• Savings: As our conservative example shows above; you gain a High Return on Investment. The savings of water can drastically improve your watering costs while at the same time substantially reduce your water usage – by 60 to 80 percent! This aids all of our clients, our environment, and the Earths most precious resource.