Drip by drip

As drought continues to devastate the southwestern states, drip irrigation has been gaining popularity. Robb Kowalewski, micro-irrigation product manager at Hunter Industries, will be sharing his industry know-how at the workshop Utilizing Drip (Micro) Irrigation.

Kowalweski says that one of the main benefits of drip irrigation is better control. Rather than spraying water, micro irrigation provides about 90 percent efficiency when used correctly, as opposed to about 60 percent with spray heads.

And drip irrigation isn’t just good for water conservation. It’s also a good option in high traffic areas. “You can control it a lot better than you can control throwing water,” Kowalewski says. “If somebody is spraying with spray heads near an area where there’s cars or people walking and there’s overspray, you’re going to waste water and you can do damage to pavement and cars. You could create an area where someone can slip and fall.”

Kowalewski has spent eight years focusing on drip irrigation, selling, training and educating. What he’s found is that most lawn care operators know a whole lot or very little. “Drip irrigation tends to be something people aren’t in the middle on,” Kowalweski says. “They either know nothing or they know a lot so there’s a high probability of getting some folks with no knowledge and some people with substantial knowledge.”

With that in mind, he’s planning a very basic level workshop, going through the different products and helping attendees understand what they are, how they’re used, why they’re used and how they work with other components of the system. He’ll also include information about design and installation. “My style is really to throw something out there. If people want to discuss around the topics, that’s my preference,” he says. “I definitely prefer to have more training and discussion than a Powerpoint.”

The workshop will be hands-on with product samples and plenty of opportunities to ask questions. He’ll cover individual products from the start of the system to the end, including control zone valve kits, regulators, filters, tubing, emitter lines, flush caps and more.

“I think people will leave with a better understanding of why they would want to use drip irrigation and a better understanding of how to install it, and what parts work best for the situations,” Kowalewski says.

Without the proper knowledge, mistakes are bound to happen. One of the biggest ones Kowalewski sees in the field is improper plant choices, so he’ll be touching on that as well. When using drip irrigation, grouping together plants with the same water requirements is a must.

“People don’t understand how much water their plants really need. They just don’t know their plants and that’s a mistake,” Kowalewski says, noting that in areas dealing with water limitations, it’s particularly important. “A lot of people will put plants with different requirements in the same zone. They’ll mix water-loving plants and ones that don’t need it, and there may be no way to balance your emission to fix that.”

Other issues he has run into include installers using tubing that is too large for the job and overwatering. “People think because they’re dripping water now, they need to run it for extended periods of time,” he says.

Utilizing Drip (Micro) Irrigation is 10-11:30 a.m. Oct. 24. To register, click here.