Irrigation system maintenance, troubleshooting and repair
I’ve watched a lot of farmers treat chemical injection like an afterthought. They buy the injector, they eyeball the dose, and they run it when they remember. Six months later they’re replacing emitters and swearing at the filter housing. Chemical…
I walked into a greenhouse in southern Spain a few years ago that smelled like a basement after a flood. The floor was slick with algae. Pots sat in trays of stagnant water. The grower was losing 15% of his…
A soil moisture sensor telling you the field is at 35% when it’s actually at 15%. A flow meter reporting 12 GPM through a zone you know pulls 8. A pressure transducer reading 45 PSI at the head of a…
Most farmers I talk to have never tested their irrigation water. They know their soil. They track rainfall. But the water coming out of their well or canal? It goes straight into the drip lines without a second look. That’s…
When a drip irrigation zone stops working, most farmers notice the plants first: drooping leaves, dry soil, stunted growth. By then, the damage is already done. A single dead zone on a 5-acre vegetable farm can cost $80 to $200…
Irrigation mainlines are the arteries of your farm. When one breaks, the whole system goes down. A 2-inch PVC crack that sprays water into the air for 24 hours at 40 PSI can dump around 18,000 liters down the drain.…
If you’ve ever pulled apart a drip line and found brown sludge packed into every emitter, you already know why filtration matters. What you might not know is that the filter you pick has as much to do with your…
Every spring I watch the same thing happen. Someone walks out to their drip system after six months of sitting idle, cranks the valve open, and expects everything to work like it did in October. Half the time they get…
If you’ve got a farm pond with a geomembrane liner, at some point you’re going to walk out there and notice the water level is lower than it should be. You’ve got a leak. I’ve talked to growers who spent…
If you’ve ever cut open a section of drip tape at the end of a season and found it coated in green slime, you already know the problem. If you haven’t cut one open yet, you should. What’s growing inside…
