I just spent the past four days putting in a drip irrigation system for the entire 160 foot long by 60 foot wide layout. I started with a four valve manifold that is fed from a 1 1/4" PVC line directly from the well pressure tank. The pressure tank is set to 55 psi. Each of the four anti-siphon solenoid valves has a 30 psi pressure regulator with a removable fine screen mesh filter. Here is the manifold.
Each valve feeds a 3/4" PVC feeder line to a different section of the layout. Here are the lines running to the western side. The yellow string line is the finished elevation reference. One of the green boxes and conduits is the power junction box for the pond pumps, gazebo, and car barn circuits. The other contains the CAT6 Ethernet lines that run from the house out to the shop building and a POE switch that will feed the wireless access points (for later installation of video cameras in the locos. Behind the electrical boxes are the power supply for the low-voltage lighting around the layout and the irrigation timer.
Here is the feeder line to the far eastern edge of the layout near the Rico yard area. I will tap off from the 3/4" line at this point and run individual 1/4" drip tubing and emitters to the plants.
I also tapped off from the feeder line to service various shrubs and small trees in the landscape. Here is a tree ring made from 1/2" drip tubig around a young Redbud tree.
Here is the feeder line to the Red Rock area on the northern side of the layout. It will feed 1/4" drip emitters around the spruce forest. I also tapped off of this line to service flowers around the gazebo and 1/4" pop-up sprinklers for the moss beds.
After the feeder lines were buried, I covered the area with a two inch layer of sand and placed the stepping stone walkway.
I filled-in around the stepping stones with topsoil and planted elfin thyme between them. It will take about a year to fully fill the gaps. The space between the stepping stones at the lower left is where the future inner loop will cross the pathway.
And here is the section of the outer loop that I had to remove just to get access to the inside of the layout (see my post earlier today about layout infrastructure.)
The few remaining bags of decomposed granite on the perimeter wall are all that are left from the 200 bags I put down this weekend. Behind the stack of stepping stone pavers is the pad where I am building the car barn. But that is another project for another weekend.
Bob