Irrigation calculator

How much water does your irrigation system put down?

Knowing it helps you set a watering schedule. Put it together with how much water you think your plants need, and you can work out how long to run each area.

Enter what waters the area and how big the area is. You'll see the gallons an hour it puts out, and what that comes to in inches of water over the area.

Fully automate your watering instead. Garzed reads each area's soil moisture with a sensor and waters it through a smart valve when it needs water. See how it works →
What waters the area

The emitter flow and spacing are usually printed along the tubing or on the spool's label, for example "0.5 GPH, 6 in spacing" (GPH is gallons per hour). The listing where you bought it will have them too. Add up all the line laid in the area.

ft
in
gal/hr
The area it waters
ft
ft
Your drip line puts out
40 gal/hr
0.67 gal/min · 80 emitters at 0.5 gal/hr each
Over the area, that's
2.0 in an hour
of water spread over 32 sq ft, measured the way rain is

How the numbers are worked out

A drip line's emitters sit at a fixed spacing, so its length tells you how many there are. 40 feet with an emitter every 6 inches has 80 emitters, and at half a gallon an hour each, the line puts out 40 gallons an hour.

Drippers and soaker hose work the same way: the count times each dripper's rating, or the length times the rating per foot. Sprinkler heads are rated in gallons a minute, so a head's rating times 60 is its gallons an hour.

One inch of water over one square foot is 0.62 gallons. So 40 gallons an hour over a 4 by 8 foot area (32 square feet) comes to about 2 inches of water an hour, measured the same way as rain.

Ratings assume a set water pressure, so a line can run higher or lower than its rating. Drip also wets the soil along each line more than the gaps between lines, so the inches are an average over the area.