A few weeks ago for Mother's day we did the annual trip to garden center to purchase hanging baskets for our deck. We have made this a family event for the last few years and it is a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Leanne gets to select the hanging baskets she wants and they boys get to run around the greenhouses.

Last weekend I reconnected our drip irrigation system to water the hanging baskets and other potted plants on our deck. The weather has been so cold and wet lately that we didn't need it set up any sooner. Once again it is nice having this system running. At 7:30 AM I can here it click on and know the plants are being watered. Now I can enjoy my coffee on the deck and have one less task to worry about.

We ran the drip irrigation tubing last year and connected all of the drip emitters. One thing we did at the end of the season before winter set in, was is to disconnect the timer from the tap and turn the tap off. I left the hose running to the plants and the emitters connected.

This year it was very easy to set up the drip system again and get it running. After every thing was connected I ran test to make sure water was flowing from all of the emitters at the correct flow rate. I made a few minor adustments to the emitters to get the system setup.

The next thing I did was to inspect the drip irrigation tubing to make sure there was no leaks. No sense in wasting water and getting a puddle of water where you don't want it. The tubing was fine but I did notice the following:

• The timer at the faucet was leaking. To fix this I tighented up the connections a bit more and it was fine after this.
• Some of the tee connectors and emitters were leaking a bit. This was because the tubing had stretched a bit. I pushed the part deeper into the tubing, which worked in some cases but there was still some leaking in some cases. To fix this I removed the connecter, cut the tubing back a bit and re-inserted the connector or emitter. This worked fine.

Once the inspection was complete, I set the timer and every thing was perfect.

If you want to see how I set up our system, please read thes articles: installing a drip irrigation system and how to setup a drip irrigation timer.