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Old 10-02-2021, 11:53 PM posted to uk.d-i-y,uk.rec.gardening
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2021
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Default Using soaker hose

On 10/02/2021 13:12, Chris J Dixon wrote:
I have, with some success, been using a porous hose to water some
of my flower beds, as they are rather dry because of clay soil, a
neighbour's ivy hedge and trees in both gardens.

The side border is about 1 m x 8 m, leading to an area of about
20 sq m across the bottom of the garden.

I currently feed from the house, via a pressure reducer and
timer, to both ends of what is essentially a loop, down the side
border, leading to meanders to cover the most distant area.
Naturally, the pressure, and hence flow, drops off at the end of
the run.

As some of the hose is now a little _too_ leaky and fragile if
jointed, I am looking to replace it this spring, before
everything bursts into growth.

Something tells me that there ought to be a simple way to work
out how to get best coverage (some sort of resistor
calculation?). I guess a separate feed hose with reduced flow
resistance, supplying sub-sections, might be the way, but I fear
the maths might point to many short stubs, which means more
joints and leak opportunities.

Chris


I have designed several soaker hose systems keeping an eye on pressure
drop and volumetric flow rates.

I have two currently in use.

One is for a greenhouse fed by 25 mm MDPE water pipe.

This is used for strawberry pots and then tomatoes during the course of
the year.

There is a stop valve followed by a watering timer that allows you to
set the frequency of the watering (4 times daily, twice daily, once
daily, every other day etc) and the duration of the watering ( 1 min, 5
mins, 10 mins, 30 mins and hour). They are cheap at arounds 15 quid.

Then there is a venturi based dosing device.

https://mazzei.net/products/venturi-injectors/

I can connect a fertiliser bottle via a stop tap for the weekly feeds to
the strawbs or toms.

This then feeds an equal Tee.

There is a hose pipe that runs round the perimeeter of the greenhouse
and both ends are connected to the one equal Tee piece.

Think of this as a water version of an electrical ring main.

I have put in a Tee piece for each pot on that watering ring main,
keeping the ring main loop as it is.

I then connect a short length of hose pipe, followed by a stop valve and
another short length of hosepipe right down to the pot from that Tee
piece on the ring main.

The stop valve is to turn off water to the one pot once the plant has
finished fruiting or has died or is not needed.

You could conceivably use the stop valve as a crude "balancing" valve
not unlike the lockshield valves on radiators.

The end of this hosepipe then feeds another Tee piece. I then cut a
length of soaker hose to just fit the inside of the pot at soil level
and connect both ends of the soaker house to the one Tee piece at the
end of the hosepipe.

Thus, by custom fitting a circular soaker hose pipe round the plant, you
"focus" the water onto that plant and as the active length of teh soaker
hose is less, you get better pressure distribution and more even flow
rates around the pots.

This has the capacity to water 30 pots with the greenhouse.

Its getting late now so tomorrow I will describe the system I use for my
outdoor veg patch.....

Prod me if I forget!