3-Layer Planter Liner Drain Packs with Bio-Barrier are the 3rd step to improve your planter drainage.
Enhance planter drainage and prevent roots from blocking drains without harming your plants.
DeepStream manufactures a planter liner 3-layer drain pack that fits inside your DeepStream planter liners over the side wall drains. Order one pack for every drainage outlet you plan for your planter liner.
Note that while drain packs will stop planting mix from washing out the side drains of DeepStream’s planter liners they will not stop color or minerals from your water, planting medium, or mulch.
Order one for every drain. $5
Filter packs with BioBarrier, when used in conjunction with clean 1-2 mm size inorganic drainage material without any clay fines, or rubber mulch mounded over the drain pack several inches thick to hold them in place, slows the flow of the water to the drain and can prevent clogged drains for a decade or more. We know from experience that BioBarrier, despite a 15-year Warranty from the manufacturer Typar will not stop aggressive root systems like runner bamboo and Calusia.
If you have questions, need more information, or would like to discuss your project, please call Sheila at (305) 857-0466 or email her at dsdmiami@gmail.com. Sheila has decades of experience to call on as a developer, general contractor, and property manager, with thousands of planter installations and remediation project experiences to help you with budget-saving ideas.
Advanced Planter Liner 3-Layer Drain Pack Components:
DeepStream cuts and then hot glues the components together, so all you have to do is place a convenient BioBarrier drain pack pouch over the drain outlet and hold in place with a mound of the drainage material following the printed: Garden Planter Liner Planting Instructions.
- The first layer is TREMDrain: a waffled plastic pad that enhances the drainage area with crush-resistant channels covered with a layer of geotextile fabric.
- The second layer is Biobarrier root control: Considered effective for 15 years by its manufacturer, we have found that it is not effective against plants with aggressive root structures like Ficus, Bamboo, and Clusia. Biobarrier is a geotextile fabric with permanently attached nodules of trifluralin, which are engineered to slowly release it to create a vapor zone where roots will not grow. Trifluralin is not systemic, so it’s not absorbed by plants, and there is no residual or cumulative effect on the plants an it is used on rows of food crops to prevent weeds eliminating the need for spraying and reducing carbon from tilling. Roots that are 2″ – 4″ away from the zone are unaffected. Trifluralin has been used for more than 40 years and, with a US EPA Class IV rating of 10,000, it is considered practically non-toxic, ranking it between sugar (29,700) and salt (3,000).
- The third layer is a geotextile fabric pouch: Encasing the Biobarrier pad, this pouch provides two more layers of filtering to the geotextile fabric pad of the Biobarrier backing and the layer of geotextile covering the TREMDrain, before excess water flows out of the liner drains.
Please note: when installing planter liner 3-layer drain pack it is critical not to crush the filter pack against the liners drain with a hard root ball, as they will make a perfect seal and prevent all drainage. Filter packs are designed to keep the planter liner drain from clogging as long as possible, as noted above, drain packs will not make drain water “clear.”
Tips for improving Planter Drainage
Drain packs must be used in conjunction with a proper planting medium for container gardening, and inorganic filtering material to slow the drainage water so that any clay “fines” that could coat the geotextile will instead settle to the bottom of the liner below the side-wall drain.
- When selecting your outdoor planters, keep in mind that drainage is critical to the health of your plants grown in containers, and it is very difficult to remedy after the fact. The design of the planter liner is one of the important components.
- Generally, more tended plants die from drowning than from lack of water. “Old school” drain holes on the bottom and gravel drainage medium simply do not work and will quickly clog. DeepStream elevates the drainage hole center approximately 2″ up the sides of your liners to provide a “reservoir” for the tap roots, but more importantly, that space allows clay “fines” present in all most all planting mediums to settle instead of clogging drain packs.
- DeepStream pioneered modern drainage practices with side-wall drains and 3-layer drain filter packs. DeepStream places from one to three 3/4″ threaded drainage ports on its 16 stock proprietary plastic planter liners, to which various plugs, hose barbs and valves may be attached. Liners are non-structural and are meant to be placed inside planter boxes.
- Depending on your plants, planting mixture, and local climate, you may need to add more drains. Additional drain holes can be added as required by drilling additional holes in the side walls with a hole saw bit. If additional threaded ports are needed we stock two-part watertight bulkhead fittings.
- Planting mediums for container gardening are as varied as local climates and plant species. Here in Florida, we can get 6” of rain in a day in the rainy season, so we need a quick draining material and we often add perlite. If you have a dry climate, you may need to add more vermiculite to retain water. Since Florida also has a dry season where it my not rain for a month or more at a time, we use drip irrigation, as the planting medium we use for the rainy season dries out far too quickly during the dry season. For more in-depth information on drip irrigation, drainage, and the many aspects of container gardening check the Helpful Resource Links to planterblog.com listed at the bottom of this page.
BioBarrier System – in the manufacturers words
The BIOBARRIER System manages roots through the slow, controlled release of trifluralin, a root inhibition herbicide that has been in use on food crops in the United States for more than 35 years. A pattern of 7/16-inch-hemisphere nodules is through-injection-molded to 4-ounce-per-square-yard, durable, proven TYPAR® geotextile fabric on 1.5-inch centers. This creates a continuous zone of root control protection.
Trifluralin diffuses from the protective nodules in vapor form, creating a root inhibition zone in the soil. Roots penetrate the zone until root tips reach the herbicidal concentration that prevents that species’ root tip cell division; this is normally 3/8 inches from the fabric. Only the root tip cell’s ability to divide and grow is affected; neither the plant nor its roots are killed because trifluralin is not systemic. The BIOBARRIER System simply diverts the roots and causes the plant to concentrate growth in branch roots away from the trifluralin zone.
Click this Direct Link to the Typar-BioBarrier manufacturers website for downloads.
