On 12/26/2010 11:01 AM, Notat Home wrote:
EVP MAN wrote:

Last year I used soaker hoses for the first time to irrigate my
vegetable garden. They worked great and I had a good crop. The problem
is that living in town, I'm on city water and sewer with a water meter.
Our sewer bill is based on our water usage even though the water used
never enters the sewer. My combined bills for water and sewer were
super high using the soaker hoses. I realize there are no free rides
but this season I will water each plant by hand with a measured two
gallon of water per plant each week depending on rainfall. When I was
researching the use of soaker hoses, it all sounded good. In my
research, soaker hoses were said to conserve your water usage but not
so as I have discovered in my case. I was running two 50' soaker hoses
for a total of four hours a week. My water and sewer bill more that
doubled! I also planted far more crops than my wife and I could use so
I ended up giving away at least half of all the vegetables I grew to
friends and family. Cost me a lot of money for a few thank you's that I
got! This season I'm not going to over plant and only grow what two
people can reasonably consume. I may raise a few tomato transplants for
my one neighbor. Gave him eight plants last year and he showed his
gratitude with a case of beer which I didn't expect but was a very nice
gesture on his part indeed Gave another neighbor eight plants also
and he let them all die because he didn't want to pay to water them at
all. Guess this year he will have to buy all his plants at a nursery if
he wants any! The funny thing is that after he lost all his plants, he
ask me if I wanted to sell him some tomatoes. I just gave him a bunch
of them. The more I think about that, I realize how dumb I was! Won't
happen this year. After he kills all his plants and wants to buy for
(free) some of my tomatoes, I'll say: sure $1.00 each. How many would
you like? LOL Live, learn and get a bit wiser each year

Rich

You might approach your municipal authorities and point out that they are
charging you for a service you are not using. In our town, they responded
by reducing the sewage charge during the irrigation system by a percentage
designed to match your sewage charge to what water you use during the
non-irrigating system. Seems fair to me.

I agree that drip irrigation systems are more efficient than the
indiscriminate soaker hoses, although they take a bit more work to install.
You can use different sizes of nozzles depending on the watering need of
each plant, and I use extra long feeder lines, in case I decide to move a
plant (or one dies and I want to put the replacement in a different spot. I
think either will work well with rain barrels, although I have read that
some states do not allow rain barrels, arguing that they keep the water
from going into the aquifier (I have no idea where they think the water
goes after you take it out of the rain barrel and put in on your garden or
lawn).

If you are considering using collected water from rain barrels or ponds or
whatever to feed a drip system be sure that you have a _good_ inline filter
in the water feed. It takes almost nothing to clog the drip emitters and
once they are plugged up they are a lost cause.

If I were younger and building or remodeling a house it would be great to
install an underground cistern for rain collection. In some rather dry
climates it is possible to collect enough free water for a large garden
from the roof of the house. Of course the huge underground storage tank is
far from free but over the span of a couple of decades it will surely pay
for itself several times over.