Low cost landscape pipe tips

Here's a tip that can cut your landscape piping costs drastically and save you time as well.  This tip for piping your landscape is a shortcut for sure!  No professional would even consider this idea.  But I'm not a professional!  On our property we've needed a water supply to our greenhouse, another water supply to our shed, and for convenience an isolated hose reel in the yard to handle watering chores conveniently, well away from the house.  Underground landscape piping for a this would be a big, expensive, job.

Of course the right way to install landscape piping.

Of course the right way to install landscape piping is to prepare deep trenches running to all the destinations and then installing some kind of permanent risers with valves to control the water flow.

But I wanted the quick low cost way to landscape piping.

A quick and very dirty way to run water to my greenhouse is with a hose.  But that's no good, you say, that's not a permanent installation.  It's just hose laying on your lawn looking like a mess.

Have you ever left a hose sit on your lawn for a long time?

What happens?  It becomes part of the lawn!  I mow my lawn fairly long, between 2 1/2 to 3 inches.  If you do mow your lawn this long, then this is a quick shortcut to very cheap landscape piping.  Just let feeder hoses sit on your lawn and wait a month.  They will disappear, the lawn will integrate the hose into itself.  See in the picture to the right, here is the completed low cost landscape pipe installation.  The hose has integrated itself and disappeared into the lawn!  Below you can see the process, when the lawn wasn't in as good shape as it is in the photo.

Watch the disappearing "cheap landscape piping"

Above the hose blends into and integrates with the lawn.  The second and third pictures are "thumbnails" click on them and see if you can pick out the hose!  It virtually disappears.  I now mow over this hose all the time.  And now my greenhouse has water.  We've got a manifold controlling flow and leading to other hoses at my homemade greenhouse.

There are some caveats.

If there is a raised area in your lawn that the hose must pass over, you must notch the topsoil enough so the hose is recessed into the ground where it crossed the ridged area.  If you don't, the first time you mow your lawn, you'll have hose fodder!

When you mow your lawn, just after your installation of "low cost landscape piping", be cautious until the lawn fully integrates the hose into itself.  After this you'll forget the hose is there!

Do you have a Brush Hog mower on your tractor?

I have run some hose "pipe" running into taller grass near my shed.  Sometimes I brush hog this grass and at times I have the brush hog just about dragging on the ground to get a close cut.  We'll I tell ya, a bush hog sure can wind up hose quickly.  My solution?  I now mow this area with my lawn mower, and, I shouldn't have had my brush hog so low in the first place.  I was able to unwind and repair the hose, so I didn't even have to buy a new hose!  Sometimes you can "reseat" the hose in the original track in the lawn so it will reintegrate more quickly.

What about the winter

Make sure you detach all accessories, especially hose reels.  Drain your hose reels, even then water may stand in piping inside your reel and fracture it.  With the reel fully detached and the hose disconnected, including the hose on the reel, then evaporation should dry out the nooks and crannies in your hose reel.

For your integrated cheap landscape pipe in your lawn, just make sure it drains.

Finally make sure you protect the ends of the hose so they don't get crushed.  The beauty of this is, even if they do get crushed, they are so easy and low cost to repair.

Need to cross under your driveway

I ran a "hose pipe" all the way around one end of my driveway to reach a hose real I wanted in the yard.  Without out this "hose pipe" I would have had to tunnel under the driveway.  Yet another low cost fix.

Remember this is truly a tip to a landscaping shortcut

This low cost irrigation piping works for me but it could be considered a trip hazard, but I'd say the lawn integrates the hose so well that this is not even an issue.  This is not a professional solution, but it works for me for now.  I have several "hose pipes" running through my lawn and they're doing their job just fine.

One final hint

If you ever aerate your lawn, don't forget your lawn "hose pipes" are there or you'll aerate them too!

Hope this helps,
Bob