Proper soaker hose use...

[Ray Brown]

I'm going to put a soaker hose around our foundation, just to be on the safe side when we go out of town.

How long do you run them for?

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

Not many construction experts here. I'll tell you what I would do but you're at your own risk.

I would run one strand of soaker hose all around the house. Connect them all together if you must so that only one faucet is used. If you can get a flow restrictor at Home Depot, do that. They're by the hose connector replacements. They come in a blister pack of 4. They are yellow and blue things the size of the hose washer but they only have a small hole in the middle.

Put the flow restrictor in and turn the hose on to a trickle. Before you leave for vacation, be sure you have water flowing all the way to the end of the hose. And that far end of the hose should be right back at the faucet where you started.

Do you have plants under the eaves of your house or do you have grass going all the way up to the foundation? I would go ahead and make a landscaping suggestion...put in a ground cover all the way to the foundation. Don't let it climb the house, but the ground cover will shade the area next to the foundation and keep the moisture content more normal through the heat. I'm happy with Asiatic jasmine although I do have to use the string trimmer on it every other week to keep it down.

[Billusa99]

Two cautions:

On soaker hose packages themselves, they caution against long run... I think it's 100 ft... you don't get proper distribution and pressure beyond that, regardless of step-down disks.

I would not leave a faucet on for all that time you are gone... leaks... animals chew through the hose for water (rats have done it to the soakers along 75 Central Expy median) ...you do not say how long, though.

If the ground is sufficiently moist before you leave and you are having your yard watered regularly, somehow, then your foundation is not going to heave and crack, even if you are gone a month.