Drip Irrigation in Ocala

Spray heads are built for turf: broad, even coverage over an open area. Beds, foundation plantings, and individual shrubs and trees are a different problem, and a spray head aimed at them wastes a lot of water on mulch and open air between plants. Drip irrigation conversion runs $250 to $800 per zone, delivering water directly to each plant’s root zone instead of broadcasting it over the whole bed.

What we do

• Convert existing spray-head zones to drip line: capping or removing spray heads, running drip tubing to each plant or a shared line along a bed, and adding emitters sized to each plant’s water needs.
• Add drip zones to new beds: for a newly planted or renovated landscape area that doesn’t yet have any irrigation.
• Repair existing drip systems: clogged emitters, kinked or chewed tubing, and pressure-regulator failures on drip systems that are already in place.
• Add or repair a pressure regulator: drip line requires much lower pressure than spray heads; a zone converted without proper regulation either underperforms or blows fittings apart under full system pressure.
• Install a dedicated drip valve when a bed needs to be split off from a spray-head zone it currently shares, since the two run at incompatible pressures and flow rates.

Why this matters on a one-day-a-week schedule

Under Marion County’s current watering restrictions, a spray-head zone gets exactly one legal watering opportunity per week to cover everything in its pattern, plants and bare ground alike. Drip irrigation uses a meaningfully smaller volume of water to keep the same plants healthy, because it isn’t wetting mulch, walkways, or the gaps between shrubs. For beds and foundation plantings specifically, converting to drip is often the difference between plants that stay healthy on the legal schedule and plants that visibly struggle because a spray head was never an efficient way to water them in the first place.

What it costs

What causes existing drip systems to fail

Drip tubing runs exposed or shallow-buried through beds, which puts it in contact with mulch, sun, foot traffic, and the occasional animal in a way buried spray-head lines never experience. The most common failures are a clogged emitter (mineral deposits from Florida’s hard water, or fine debris, blocking the small opening that regulates flow), a kinked line from mulch being moved or replaced around it, and a chewed line, more common on properties bordering open land or horse pasture where wildlife traffic is higher. All three are quick, inexpensive fixes once located; the harder part is usually finding which emitter or section of line is the problem, since a partial blockage can leave a plant just barely underwatered rather than obviously dry.

How a conversion or repair visit works

1. You tell us the bed or zone you want converted, or the symptom on an existing drip system.

2. We assess plant count, bed layout, and current zone wiring to plan the drip line run and emitter placement.

3. We install drip tubing and emitters sized to each plant, add a pressure regulator if the zone previously ran spray heads, and connect to the existing valve or a new dedicated one.

4. We test flow to every emitter, checking that each plant is actually getting water, not just that the line is pressurized.

5. We set the controller run time for the new zone, since drip zones typically need longer run times than spray zones to deliver the same amount of water at a much lower flow rate.

Where we work

On site across Ocala, Belleview, Dunnellon, Silver Springs Shores, Summerfield, On Top of the World, Marion Oaks, and Reddick. If a bed has dry or struggling plants and you’re not sure whether it’s a drip issue or something upstream, the dry or brown patches problem page walks through the checks, and the irrigation repair cost calculator turns your symptom into a specific estimate.