Greenhouse irrigation
Discussion
Hi All,
Back in the UK I had used Antelco micro irrigation kit very successfully. It seemed a bit more professional than some of the more common brands and was extremely reliable and robust.
Sadly, I can’t seem to source their kit in Ireland and just wanted options / experiences of the more common systems such as Gardena and Hozelock, or any other brands I’ve not seen.
Going away in a couple of weeks and very keen to get a decent system in to cover the watering while I’m gone!
Thanks in advance,
J
Back in the UK I had used Antelco micro irrigation kit very successfully. It seemed a bit more professional than some of the more common brands and was extremely reliable and robust.
Sadly, I can’t seem to source their kit in Ireland and just wanted options / experiences of the more common systems such as Gardena and Hozelock, or any other brands I’ve not seen.
Going away in a couple of weeks and very keen to get a decent system in to cover the watering while I’m gone!
Thanks in advance,
J
RizzoTheRat said:
I've used both Gardina and Hozelock timers and they both worked fine, but I've never managed to get dripper nozzles to work properly.
Thanks RTR. I have always used the Gardena timers and they’ve been perfect - as long as you take them inside to avoid frosts in winter. Frost kills the solenoids.What type of drippers are you using? One of the Gardena types has a little regulating plastic ball in the end and these often get stuck due to limescale build up. They even had a special tool you could poke in the end to free the ball. Not sure if they’re the same design now though…
Pheo said:
Is this for in pots or in the ground?
I have autopot systems and also some Quadgrow units. The latter are arguably less fuss, the autopot probably slightly better for an extensible system and for hungrier plants.
Thanks Pheo. It’s for a mixture of low, raised beds and some pots. I’ll take a look at those suggestions and see if I can source them over here.I have autopot systems and also some Quadgrow units. The latter are arguably less fuss, the autopot probably slightly better for an extensible system and for hungrier plants.
Cheers
I bought the Gardena one a season or two ago - it is excellent, quite an upgrade on the Screwfix one I was using before. The Screwfix one was incredible value for money but as the whole thing was just one size of hose it’s impossible to get a system of any size to balance properly. The Gardena one was a chunky main line and then smaller lines teed of it.
I have used Claber stuff and imo it's a step up from hozelock, gardena type stuff. not professional level by any means but better than the others. ive still got a hose, albeit shorter now, must be 15 years old and its taken building site style abuse, a hozelock I got a year or so ago is already split in multiple places.
aderbyshirelad said:
RizzoTheRat said:
I've used both Gardina and Hozelock timers and they both worked fine, but I've never managed to get dripper nozzles to work properly.
Thanks RTR. I have always used the Gardena timers and they ve been perfect - as long as you take them inside to avoid frosts in winter. Frost kills the solenoids.What type of drippers are you using? One of the Gardena types has a little regulating plastic ball in the end and these often get stuck due to limescale build up. They even had a special tool you could poke in the end to free the ball. Not sure if they re the same design now though
I had one that had a thickish (10-15mm maybe) plastic pipe and then things a bit like brake bleed nipples that punched in to the pipe, screwed up tight, and then you attach thinner pipes to them to go to the dripper. Every single punch through leaked and I had to wrap everything in self amalgamating tape
The other setup I had use thin flexible pipe and came with a load of joiners and T sections, the pipes and joiners worked well, however neither type of dripper I had worked that well.
For beds I laid some porous pipe just under the surface and that worked really well.
I moved house a few years ago though and no longer have any veg beds so binned it all.
RizzoTheRat said:
Annoyingly I can't remember.
I had one that had a thickish (10-15mm maybe) plastic pipe and then things a bit like brake bleed nipples that punched in to the pipe, screwed up tight, and then you attach thinner pipes to them to go to the dripper. Every single punch through leaked and I had to wrap everything in self amalgamating tape
The other setup I had use thin flexible pipe and came with a load of joiners and T sections, the pipes and joiners worked well, however neither type of dripper I had worked that well.
For beds I laid some porous pipe just under the surface and that worked really well.
I moved house a few years ago though and no longer have any veg beds so binned it all.
I use the 'nipple' things into ordinary green hose pipe, like the stuff you get from toolstation.I had one that had a thickish (10-15mm maybe) plastic pipe and then things a bit like brake bleed nipples that punched in to the pipe, screwed up tight, and then you attach thinner pipes to them to go to the dripper. Every single punch through leaked and I had to wrap everything in self amalgamating tape
The other setup I had use thin flexible pipe and came with a load of joiners and T sections, the pipes and joiners worked well, however neither type of dripper I had worked that well.
For beds I laid some porous pipe just under the surface and that worked really well.
I moved house a few years ago though and no longer have any veg beds so binned it all.
If you drill the right size hole, they don't seem to leak noticeably, but it wouldn't matter much if they did, as they are mostly positioned over a plant pot.
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
OutInTheShed said:
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
I found mine worked better from the water butt than from a tap, the flow restrictor in the system I had wasn't really good enough for mains pressureOutInTheShed said:
I use the 'nipple' things into ordinary green hose pipe, like the stuff you get from toolstation.
If you drill the right size hole, they don't seem to leak noticeably, but it wouldn't matter much if they did, as they are mostly positioned over a plant pot.
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
I’m intrigued to hear your supply is “just” off a water butt, not the mains. I am looking at running two separate systems off one external tap. One to cover the greenhouse and another to come on at a different time to cover the polytunnel further down the garden. Above the polytunnel is a 1250 litre water butt. It would be a lot simpler to run a system from the butt. The polytunnel is about 3-4 metres below the base of the butt, do you think that’s a sufficient head of pressure for such a system to be effective? Also, I have had trouble in the past where the mains water pressure was so low that it wasn’t strong enough to “force” open the solenoid on the timer when the programme kicked in. Would that not be similar when trying to use a water butt? Guess I could buy the timer unit I’m going to be anyway and test it!?If you drill the right size hole, they don't seem to leak noticeably, but it wouldn't matter much if they did, as they are mostly positioned over a plant pot.
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
Cheers
aderbyshirelad said:
OutInTheShed said:
I use the 'nipple' things into ordinary green hose pipe, like the stuff you get from toolstation.
If you drill the right size hole, they don't seem to leak noticeably, but it wouldn't matter much if they did, as they are mostly positioned over a plant pot.
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
I m intrigued to hear your supply is just off a water butt, not the mains. I am looking at running two separate systems off one external tap. One to cover the greenhouse and another to come on at a different time to cover the polytunnel further down the garden. Above the polytunnel is a 1250 litre water butt. It would be a lot simpler to run a system from the butt. The polytunnel is about 3-4 metres below the base of the butt, do you think that s a sufficient head of pressure for such a system to be effective? Also, I have had trouble in the past where the mains water pressure was so low that it wasn t strong enough to force open the solenoid on the timer when the programme kicked in. Would that not be similar when trying to use a water butt? Guess I could buy the timer unit I m going to be anyway and test it!?If you drill the right size hole, they don't seem to leak noticeably, but it wouldn't matter much if they did, as they are mostly positioned over a plant pot.
I'm using a generic plug in timer. The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher. The water comes from a 220 litre water butt.
Cheers
The solenoid valve is from an old dishwasher or washing machine. I don't know the make off hand.
The water butt has a head of about 4 to 6 feet. The solenoid valve doesn't seem to need any mains pressure to open.
The coil is mains voltage, I've insulated it with heat shrink, hot glue and hope, and put it in a box.
Another way of doing it which I've briefly played with is to use a 12V centrifugal pump, these are cheap £15 'bilge pumps' for small boats, they will lift a few hundred gallons per hour a few feet. I was thinking about a header tank which the pump would fill when the timer turned it on, then the tank slowly drains via the drippers.
I'm not too serious about all this, just need to get a bit of water on a few veg while I'm away for a few days.
I've installed a few irrigation systems, but they have always been mains pressure rather than gravity fed. To get mains pressure through gravity you'd need the water butt 10-30 meters above your garden, which is not really feasible unless you live on a hill. They don't necessarily need that much pressure, though, timers are usually ball valves. The minimum operating pressure for the LinkTap system I'm using is 0.2 bar, which would be 2 meters, bit more doable. You could use a submersible pump and a float switch to transfer water from where you collect it to a header tank. Or just use a pump to directly pressurise the watering circuit at the same time as opening the valve, though that might be less robust and more complicated to synchronise.
In principle you just run a lower pressure system for longer. In practice you might find that some of the drippers don't get anything at all, and drippers designed to spray water won't unless the pressure is high enough. If I were doing that I would use the sort of timer I have here, which has four independent valves, to run four separate circuits with fewer drippers on them. I'm using a LinkTap system, having realised that the cheap timers are false economy.
In principle you just run a lower pressure system for longer. In practice you might find that some of the drippers don't get anything at all, and drippers designed to spray water won't unless the pressure is high enough. If I were doing that I would use the sort of timer I have here, which has four independent valves, to run four separate circuits with fewer drippers on them. I'm using a LinkTap system, having realised that the cheap timers are false economy.
One of the early systems I bought had a pressure reducer, the drippers are AIUI, intended to run a quite low pressure.
Low pressure is good on the flat, obviously if you've only got 1m head, then trying to balance a system where things are at different levels becomes a joke.
Even if the system is OK when the tap is on, when the timer stops, the system drains out of the lowest point as air enters the higher drippers. Then next time the timer comes on, the system has to fill before the top dripper starts working.
IF you've got a lot of bigger bore hose, that becomes an issue. If you've got a lot of small bore hose, pressure drop due to water flow becomes an issue.
I think there is quite an art in doing it optimally, but a crude system that keeps our beans alive is relatively easy.
Plug in mains timer, 12V pump, 12v wall wart, various plumbing adaptors that many people have lying around their sheds. 10 or 20 quid of ebay 'irrigation'.
I do have a lot of the odds and ends, solar panels, 12v batteries, pumps in my shed due to decades of faffing with boats as well as houses and some industrial stuff.
There are some solar powered systems on ebay for £20, I wonder if they are any good?
We are too tight to use mains water on the garden except about twice in the last 8 years. Don't really want the risk of some cheap plastic fitting leaking hundreds of pounds worth of water while I'm away.
Like any 'home automation', it risks become a hobby which wastes more time than the activity it displaces.
Low pressure is good on the flat, obviously if you've only got 1m head, then trying to balance a system where things are at different levels becomes a joke.
Even if the system is OK when the tap is on, when the timer stops, the system drains out of the lowest point as air enters the higher drippers. Then next time the timer comes on, the system has to fill before the top dripper starts working.
IF you've got a lot of bigger bore hose, that becomes an issue. If you've got a lot of small bore hose, pressure drop due to water flow becomes an issue.
I think there is quite an art in doing it optimally, but a crude system that keeps our beans alive is relatively easy.
Plug in mains timer, 12V pump, 12v wall wart, various plumbing adaptors that many people have lying around their sheds. 10 or 20 quid of ebay 'irrigation'.
I do have a lot of the odds and ends, solar panels, 12v batteries, pumps in my shed due to decades of faffing with boats as well as houses and some industrial stuff.
There are some solar powered systems on ebay for £20, I wonder if they are any good?
We are too tight to use mains water on the garden except about twice in the last 8 years. Don't really want the risk of some cheap plastic fitting leaking hundreds of pounds worth of water while I'm away.
Like any 'home automation', it risks become a hobby which wastes more time than the activity it displaces.
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