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Here in Southern California, with our semiarid climate, it’s just about impossible to have an ornamental landscape and not need irrigation. Spray irrigation has been a big part of that, but new technologies are pushing us away from them. But why? Spray irrigation, on average, is only 30-50% efficient. What does that mean? For every 100 drops of water, only 30 to 50 of them actually gets to the plant. What happens to the rest? The rest either never ends up near the plant’s root zone where it can be used, evaporates in the air or on the soil because it pools, over-saturates the soils and runs-off into the street, or all of the above. Now you see the problem with spray. The newest technologies and advances in drip irrigation feature systems that are 90-99% efficient.

Drip irrigation, also referred to a drip, dripline, subsurface or low volume irrigation, is the process of delivering precise amounts of water and nutrients directly to the plant’s root zone. This is accomplished by the use of small emitters that allow water or nutrients out, drop by drop, directly at each and every desired plant. So why is this better than many drops at once? Spray heads can emit many drops at once, but like we learned in the last paragraph, most of those drops end up being wasted. Drip allows for exact irrigation control and efficient use of limited water resources. That means we can put down less water in a landscape, and make it more useful to plants than putting down extra water. You can compare it to this: drip is like the water in an eye dropper, whereas spray is a gallon jug of water. What if you could keep a plant healthy with just the eyedropper, instead of using a whole gallon? You’d obviously use the eyedropper. Why waste an entire gallon? Well, you’ve just crossed over to drip! That’s why we fully support drip systems, and use them as often as possible.

When thinking of ways to save, think about the water you could save by switching. For many of our clients, they end up saving hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons per year by making the switch. Another unexpected advantage: you’ll get fewer weeds! Many times, weeds thrive on overspray. By delivering water only to those plants that you pick, this will greatly reduce the number of weeds around the yard. Depending on the size of your system, our team could install drip in as little as a day. We make it that easy!