Flood Irrigation Project: Diverting the Flow

Gardening

When we purchased our new property, we were so excited to reap the benefits of flood irrigation. Aside from being dirt cheap ($8/hour every couple of weeks), the water is better for plants than city water and allows for truly deep watering of our trees. We have two, large 12″ pipes that stick out of the ground in our front yard with metal caps/screws. When it is our watering slot (usually 1 hour), we unscrew the caps and let the water flood following the grade of the yard, filling up the front, flowing through holes in the block fence to the backyard. The prior owners of the home diverted the water in such a way that it was constantly eroding…everything – berms, the patio foundation, roots of the citrus. They also placed a wall of stacked cinder blocks and some plexiglass sheets to divert the water into the lawn when they wanted to water the grass.

We decided to backfill both channels, which ran down both sides of the property, to prevent erosion of the soil around the trees and allow us to put mulch in these areas without it washing away with each flood.

My husband and I are by no means experienced builders, but we watch a lot of YouTube and can make up the rest as we go! Yes, you could probably contact me and tell us all the ways we did this wrong, or were sloppy, but I think what we built works extremely well for our needs. And if something we did inspires a project for you, excellent!

Before starting any official work, we did a “trial run” with dry stacked block to get a feel for how the water would flow, how tall to make the wall, the angle of the wall, etc. The video below shows our flood irrigation running with the dry stacked setup:

 

So what did we do?

  • First, we dug footers for the wall sections. We dug these deeper and wider than might be necessary for a traditional block wall because this wall needs to hold back flowing water.
  • We poured the footers next. With 2 PALLETS of quickcrete mix from Lowe’s and a rented large 3hp mixer, we mixed A LOT of concrete. It took four of us six hours to mix all the concrete and pour these footers.
  • Then the block wall. We used regular block for most of it, and retaining wall blocks to form a curved section (with mortar between the seams to prevent erosion.)
  • Lastly, we laid down heavy duty landscape fabric where the water would flow, and covered it with river stone.
Digging Footers
Digging Footers on Left side of channel
Footer Trench Right Side of Spillway
Overview of prepped area
Overview of prepped area
We had to scoop up all the existing river stone and move it out of the way to build the walls
Laying rebar in the trenches
My father-in-law helping us lay rebar in preparation for pouring the concrete

Unfortunately, I didn’t capture any photo or video of us actually pouring the concrete footers. It was mostly dark and we were all working double time – no time for a phone in my hand!

Dry section of the footer
Laying block
Cutting the block at a very non-standard angle

It seems I failed to take any more detailed pictures of the rest of the process – probably something to do with taking care of a 2-month-old! The rest of the project essentially consisted of setting the block wall and the curved retaining wall. We mortared the joints of the retaining wall to improve the water-tightness and prevent erosion of the dirt behind the wall.

After the wall was cured and capped, we laid a layer of heavy duty landscape fabric down on the dirt where the water flows before finally placing the river stone on top.

Here is the area before and after: