The Complete Handbook of Watering & Irrigation
For Professionals, Businesses, and Serious Hobbyists Who Need to Buy, Install, and Maintain the Right System
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
Understand how irrigation works, choose the right system, install it correctly, and keep it running. For professionals and serious practitioners.
About this book
Water is the single largest input cost in most landscapes, farms, and nurseries—and the difference between a system that wastes thousands of dollars and one that delivers water precisely where it's needed comes down to understanding fundamentals and making informed choices.
This handbook explains what watering and irrigation systems actually do, how they move water through soil and to plants, and why the specifications that matter (emitter spacing, operating pressure, filtration design) directly affect your cost, water use, and results. It walks you through the real criteria for choosing a system for your specific situation, covers installation and maintenance in practical terms, and addresses the problems that most commonly derail systems in the field.
If you install, manage, or specify irrigation systems—or if you're evaluating one for your property or business—this handbook gives you the grounding to ask the right questions, spot hidden problems, and make decisions without relying solely on vendor guidance or trial and error.
Reader Reviews
Eric Davis
★★★★★I'm a landscape contractor and I found this genuinely useful—the chapter on choosing the right system for different soils actually helped me understand why a drip setup that worked perfectly on one sandy client's property failed miserably on another clay-heavy site. That said, I wish the troubleshooting section had more on pressure regulation specifics; I still had to make a couple of calls to suppliers on jobs. Overall, solid reference that I'll keep on the truck.
Richard Rodriguez
★★★★★As someone managing irrigation for a small nursery, I appreciated the clarity on water uniformity and why my emitter spacing matters—the book makes it clear without getting bogged down in math. My one frustration: the installation chapter could have gone deeper on winterization steps for cold climates. But I've already recommended it to two other nursery operators and it's already paid for itself by helping me avoid a costly system replacement.
Linda Campbell
★★★★★This is exactly what I needed. I was inheriting an old drip irrigation setup at my property and had no idea if it was salvageable or worth replacing, and the troubleshooting chapter gave me a diagnostic framework that actually worked. Within an hour of reading Chapter 5, I'd identified three fixable problems that were causing my water to spray everywhere except where it should. The book is practical, concrete, and written by someone who clearly understands the real problems people run into. Highly recommend if you're managing water on any scale.