Irrigation system maintenance, troubleshooting and repair
I’ve watched a farmer spend $4,000 on a drip system and $120 on a filter, then spend the next three months unclogging emitters by hand. He’d poke them with a thumbtack, one by one, every four days. The filter he…
You set up your drip irrigation system in April. Everything ran fine through May. Then July hits, the temperature climbs past 35°C, and suddenly half your tomato rows look stressed while the other half are sitting in puddles. You walk…
A small leak in a drip irrigation system is easy to ignore. You walk past a damp patch of soil, maybe notice a faint hissing sound, and tell yourself you’ll get to it next week. I’ve done it. Most farmers…
A $15 Mistake I Keep Seeing A farmer I know in Kenya lost half his tomato crop last year. The cause wasn’t drought or disease. It was a gate valve he’d been using to throttle flow to his drip lines.…
I’ve seen it too many times. A farmer spends two weekends installing a drip irrigation system, gets the pressure dialed in, watches the first few cycles work perfectly, and then three months later half the emitters are plugged and the…
How to Keep Your Drip Irrigation System Running Like New (Without Losing Your Weekend to It) I’ve been installing and fixing drip systems for over a decade, and here’s something that surprises most people: the number one reason drip irrigation…
