Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. For now, we are marketing this product primarily to DIY gardeners who would rather save money and have more freedom to customize the design by building it themselves than paying someone else to make them. So yes, a few hand tools and a power drill are required to build this design.

That said, the tools required are ones that are commonly found in most households, or widely available in local stores and inexpensive to obtain, and require little, if any, skills to use them. The “difficulty level” to build this is commensurate to a beginner’s skill level.

We primarily designed it for use with raised beds, but it can be easily adapted for use in ground level vegetable garden beds as well.

The original IrriGrid™ design concept was intended for beds that are rectangular, but the book also includes a borderless variant of the original design that can be adapted for odd-shaped raised garden beds.  This includes, for example, beds that are oval or round in shape, or beds that have corner posts or other structural obstacles inside the bed walls that might prevent a bordered grid from utilizing all the available space in the bed.

Yes, we run ours with the rain barrels we have. This type of irrigation requires at least 15 PSI of water pressure to run, so it is necessary to either elevate your rain barrels to produce enough water pressure via gravity, or use a fluid transfer pump. The plans include information about how to meet water pressure and volume requirements to use this irrigation system with rain catchment systems.

Adding more “squares” to the existing grid is an option, but there’s a slight drawback. We usually try to make all the squares of an entire grid equal in size, but the dimensions of the squares change slightly with each different size of grid. So the squares you would add to your existing grid would need to be slightly wider than the squares on the existing grid. If that doesn’t bother you — and it’s pretty unlikely the plants would notice — go ahead and add the additional squares, and it should work just fine.

Another option you can consider to avoid replacing your existing grid is to add a second 2-by-4 grid, which would give you the option to run them together on the same watering schedule, or maintain two different watering schedules in separate irrigation zones. This would allow you to have plants with different watering requirements in the same bed. This is also a good option if your water pressure is marginal and there’s some doubt that it can power a grid with 24 (or more) emitters.

Sure, we have some grids with larger squares that have two sprinkler assemblies in each square, and it’s easy to add more if needed. All the pipes of the grid have water running through them, so you can just drill a hole wherever you want the additional sprinkler and insert it there. If you decide later you don’t want that additional sprinkler, you can remove it and plug the hole.

As a rule, you’ll probably want to try to make any changes you make permanent. You’ll also want to be aware of how many emitters can be run simultaneously from your water source. The book includes instructions on how to measure that.

The most important way to customize irrigation grids is the overall size, since garden beds come in so many different sizes. We didn’t want to exclude gardeners whose existing beds were not one of the same bed sizes we included in the book. So in addition to the pre-calculated grid sizes to fit several commonly used bed sizes, the book also includes instructions to calculate pipe dimensions to make grids of virtually any rectangular size.

Other design variations the book explores include grids based on alternate square sizes, grids that mount on the rim of the bed rather than sitting inside the bed wall, and borderless grids.

We are pursuing partnerships with makers/manufacturers to make prefab kits with pre-cut materials and parts that can be assembled without having to do any cutting or drilling, and/or partially-assembled grids that are assembled as far as they can be without being ridiculously expensive to ship.

Nothing definite to announce at this time, but we are pursuing it.

Once your payment is accepted, our website will provide a link to download the book electronically, and also send the link in an order confirmation to the email address you provide us at checkout time. There is no time limit to download your purchase.

No, you have an option to create an account during checkout, but you can check out as a guest if you prefer not to.

There are a couple of reasons why you might want to, though. Having an account will provide you with on-site access to your downloads — as long as you haven’t reached your download limit. Also, we are developing supplimental content for people who have purchased the book, which will only be accessible to registered customers.

When you create an account, you get an email that asks you to choose a password for your account. Just click on the link, and you’ll be taken to a page that lets you enter the password you want for your account.

You can contact us and request us to re-send it.

Note that we are aware there have been some long delays in mail delivery for Yahoo! email subscribers. If you have a Yahoo! email address, there may be delays in receiving it.