Irrigating a polytunnel - any tips?

[cevenol jardin]

I will be growing in a polytunnel for the first time starting this autumn and was wondering if anyone has any experience putting irrigation systems in. I want to know if it is ok to water from above or should i really be looking at putting drip hoses or something in. Currently our veg gardens can take 2 hours to water daily by hand in the hight of summer (which can last 6 months)which is a bit mad so i want to try and start putting in some kind of irrigation to cut the time down. As i am starting fresh with the polytunnel i may as well start there.

Any tips greatly appreciated. Ps. the tunnel is 50ft long.

[richard p]

both of our tunnels are 30 x 14. i tried leaky hoses, which only watered a strip arround the hose and just didnt put in enough water. for several years now ive used an ordinary rotary lawn sprinkler on the garden hose, it does half a tunnel at a time. during warm weather i usually water once a week on a sunday morning depending on the temp and soil conditions it runs from 15 minutes to an hour in each position. in very hot dry weather we do a short damp down one evening mid week. as a guide it puts out about 250 gallons an hour, for some reason we are the only property on the road without a water meter,if we had one i guess we would be pumping well water. i do sometimes wonder whether we should be using well water to avoid the chlorine in the mains but just turning a tap on is so conveinient. others will tell you not to water the foliage and never wet cucumbers but this way works for us. at the moment the soil in the garden is moist enough that the plants in the outer beds in the tunnels dont need watering at all, in the central beds the tomatoes and cucumbers are over. we wont start regular watering of the tunnels until the strawberries start to move, probably during march.
we did try an oscillating lawn sprinkler to give a rectangular coverage but the xxx things keep sticking in one position.

[Allan]

We have 4 tunnels 64x18 ft, also 3 'mobile ones approx 60x16 ft. We use two main ways of irrigating, drip for individual plants and leaky pipe for rows of salad for example. The water from leaky pipe does saturate some way out from the visible strip if left long enough. Recently I used a leaky pipe to do an area 30x8 ft at one go by pegging the leaky pipe in position and running it off mains pressure, two runs of about 1 hour, entirely satisfactory. Our leaky pipe is large bore commercial stuff, not usually sold retail but Interploy Irrigation, Kingston (website)sell it.Much longer runs of possible with this.
As we are not residential at our garden watering is by way of electronic timers such as Galcon and some old Gardena timers, it saves many hours of work. It is possible to run the watering at night when water pressure is at its best.
Cucumbers don't need a lot of water at their roots but a regular misting of their leaves is highly desirable in summer to keep red spider in check, this also works for Aubergines.The misting is by overhead pipes with fine nozzles on seperate timers.
Allan