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Automatic Watering Systems, With a Water
Butt
Update 29/12/06 Since this article was
written Hozelock have manufactured a water butt pump. So if electricity is available then with the
use of the hozelock water butt pump you can run a
complete watering system as if it was connected to a
tap.
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding
automatic watering systems in 2005 was whether a
watering system could be run from a water butt.
These systems are designed to run from an external
tap but there are many benefits of running a system
from a water butt or reasons why an external tap
cannot be used or is simply not available. We
promised many times last year that we would run
tests on the Hozelock watering system to investigate
the possibility of using the system with a water
butt and, sorry for the delay, we have finally
completed the tests and the results are interesting.
We found that it is possible to use a small
automatic watering system from a water butt
if you stick to certain drippers. The water pressure
provided by the water butt is purely derived from the
gravity of the water in the butt, due to the low pressure the most effective
drippers are the adjustable drippers and the flow control valve.
The flow control valve (shown bottom right) isn't strictly a dripper but
as it's adjustable it is ideal for use with low pressure
as the valve can be opened right up so that there is
little resistance.
The pressure compensating drippers (shown top
right) that come with the complete watering kits
where found to be ineffective as they require higher
pressure than that available from the water butt. If
you would still like to purchase one of the kits
then you would will need to purchase the adjustable
drippers separately to replace the pressure
compensating drippers provided in the kit.
From the tests we proved that it would be
possible to water a number of grow bags for at least
a fortnight allowing you to go on holiday and still
water your tomato plants, or in the event of a
hosepipe ban you could still water a number of pots,
grow bags or individual plants. The draw back is
that the Hozelock timers don't work with less than 1
bar of pressure so we don't have a solution to
automatically time the watering period. |  |
Read on to see a detailed plan of how to set the
system up. If you need to run a substantial watering
system and don't have access to an external tap but do
have access to electricity then you can run a watering system using a
Hozelock's new water butt pump.
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