How water pressure affects your garden watering

July 2, 2025

When a watering setup isn't doing its job, most people blame the sprinkler or the dripper, and fair enough, but a lot of the time the gear is fine and the real problem is the water pressure coming out of the tap, so it's worth understanding a little about it before you start swapping things out.

Signs the pressure is too low

Sprinklers that dribble instead of throwing a decent arc are the obvious one, and so are drippers at the far end of a long line that barely wet the ground while the ones near the tap are fine. It often gets worse when someone's in the shower or the washing machine is running, because the house and the garden are sharing the same supply.

Signs the pressure is too high

Fittings that keep blowing off the end of the line and sprinklers that turn the water into a fine mist that drifts away on the breeze are the usual signs there's more pressure than the gear was made for.

A simple check

You don't need special gear to get a rough idea of what your tap can do. Turn it on fully and time how long it takes to fill a 10 litre bucket, then work out how many litres a minute you're getting. The pack on your sprinklers and drippers tells you how much water each one uses, so adding them up shows you straight away whether you're asking one tap to do more than it can.

Fixing low pressure

The fix is usually to ask less of the tap at once. Split the garden into zones that run at different times, so each one gets the full flow, and keep runs of small pipe short, because the longer and narrower the pipe, the more pressure you lose along it. Pressure compensating drippers are worth knowing about too, because they put out the same amount at the end of a line as at the start, as long as the pressure is within their range.

Fixing high pressure

A pressure reducer fitted after the tap brings it down to something drip line can live with, and it's the usual answer if you're on strong mains pressure and running drippers. Check the pressure range printed on the drip line pack, because that's what you're aiming to stay inside.

Shop related products

Pope Drip Eze 2LH 13mm x 30m. Dripline with the drippers built in.
Pope Partner Sprinkler. A hose end sprinkler for lawns and beds.
Pope 12mm Hose Stop Connector. Lets you swap gear over without walking back to the tap.
Pope 12mm Brass Tap Adaptor 20BSP. A solid connection at the tap end.

Did you know we also stock a 3/4 inch pressure reducer and pressure compensating drippers in the shop, and they aren't on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of the watering range is in our Pope collection and our garden centre, and if you tell us what you're running off the tap we'll help you work out where the pressure's going.