Gravity fed automatic irrigation?

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Jan
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Gravity fed automatic irrigation?

Post by Jan »

I'm on tank water and am looking to st up an automatic irrigation system for my trees, "rather than reinvent the wheel" does anyone have any recomendations?

The gravity pressure is not enough to run multiple small sprays so thinking of drippers - again, any recomendations?

Thanks,

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Re: Gravity fed automatic irrigation?

Post by shibui »

I've also been operating on low pressure water sources for many years so have found out some of the pitfalls Jan.

Many irrigation solenoids don't operate properly on low pressure so you may need to source special valves if you want automatic with low pressure. Not sure if there are any that will manage with ultra low pressure straight from a low mounted tank.
I know some growers who use drippers to water bonsai pots but when I tried I could not get good coverage. Drippers only water one section of a pot and leave the rest of the pot dry. Larger pots will probably need 2 or more drippers to provide good coverage. That will mean lots of pipe and spaghetti tube to cover all pots properly.
Use larger poly pipe rather than small. All pipes cause internal friction as water flows so pressure is lost when water flows through any pipe. Smaller pipes have higher friction losses and longer lengths lose more pressure. With low starting pressure you cannot afford to lose much more so best to oversize delivery and distribution pipes and keep runs as short as possible.

In the end I also installed a pressure pump to operate standard controller, valves and sprays.

How big is the tank? Automatic watering may use more water than targeted hand watering.
What head (how high is the tank above the trees)?
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