A New Kind of Drip Design

I'm Lori Palmquist, and I'm so excited to share this new drip design process with you that I've created. It not only makes drip irrigation more approachable, but I believe it will empower you to create successful designs that will make for happy and thriving plants and gardens.

The thought of teaching you my new four-step drip design process brings me unreasonable amounts of joy. And I'm hoping it will bring you unreasonable amounts of fulfillment and success.

If we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, check out my bio on my Puddle-Stompers website.

Climate Discovery Garden

In this course, we will be designing the drip system for the Climate Discovery Garden at The Gardens at Heather Farm in Walnut Creek, CA.

This is an existing water-efficiency demonstration garden that was last renovated in 2003. The garden is under renovation to change to a focus of demonstrating the best plants and practices for managing our landscapes and limited water supply well into the future, as our climate is steadily changing.

We have a planting plan and will design the irrigation but not install it.

Drip Design by Checklist

This drip design course teaches you how to design and implement drip correctly, if you aren't going to create an irrigation plan either with CAD software or drawing by hand.

A huge number of landscape professionals are designing drip "on the fly." I've created this process to ensure that the important details that matter most are focused on, in the "on the fly" design process.

I'll also provide you with a workbook of checklists that you can either use yourself for installation and ongoing maintenance, or fill it out and hand it off to the installer and the client.

Who is this course for?
This course is for professionals who want to create line-source grid OR point-source grid drip systems for residential or commercial landscapes.

NOTE: Access to to-scale plans isn't required.

A Slightly Different Take on Drip Methods

Anyone who has taken an irrigation class from me knows that I'm strongly biased toward line-source drip (grids). The other method of drip, which I've opposed for years, is point-source drip, where button emitters and other devices provide "spot watering" in selected areas of the landscape.

In the landscape trade, there's resistance to using line-source drip. Contractors and installers prefer to use button emitters and other spot watering devices. The problem with this is that more emitters and devices need to be added as the plants grow, and this is rarely done, so the plants struggle or die.

In this course, I'll introduce a new point-source drip method that is a hybrid between line-source and point-source drip. It provides the benefits of both methods. It lays the infrastructure for the mature garden from the beginning, and it gives a sure way for the plants to thrive while getting established.

Course Workbook

The checklists for this course come in the form of a seven-page PDF workbook, with four of the pages dedicated to the four steps, and three pages of appendices.

You're welcome to use this workbook to design your drip projects going forward.

Course Curriculum

CEUs: 6 awarded by APLD

Hours of Content: At least 6 hours

• Examples of drip design plans
• Course workbook
• Line-source grids & point-source grids
• Introduction of project site
• Your project site

Step 1 - Evaluate Site

• Water source, pressure & flow (basic hydraulics)
• Three methods of determining soil type

Step 2 - Set Up Hydrozones

• Hydrozone criteria explained
• Hydrozone worksheet and map

Step 3 - Decide on Drip Method & Flow Specifications

• Choosing a drip method
• Drip specifications
• Getting the square footages of the hydrozones

Step 4 - Create Irrigation Schedules

• Irrigation scheduling explained
• Using the WaterWonk IrrCalc scheduling calculator

Wrap-Up

• Documentation - Get it on paper
• Pep talk

Course Resource Library

• Course workbook
• Friction loss charts
• Cheat sheet - Choosing a Drip Method