Soaker hose in polytunnel/greenhoues beds?

[Bill HH]

Wow Bill, impressive stuff! Your garden looks amazing. What fills the barrels in the first place?

Thank you.

It all comes off half of the house roof, I am working on tying in the other half and the garage. But even so it filled two barrels in one night recently.

[bario1]

Yes, my polytunnel fills barrels faster than i can bail them out at the moment - need to get the entire system in place so I can send the overflow off to a drainage ditch, and want to do it ASAP to harvest as much water as possible before the rains dry up... oh hang on, I forgot, I live in Scotland...

[Kristen]

I cant see how a syphon helps in this situation,

It was to avoid the cost of a timer, but sorry if I haven't been able to explain it well enough for folk to understand.

[bario1]

I'm still intrigued by the syphon, Kristen... I remember my dad using a pipe to get petrol from a car's petrol tank (his own!), he had to suck it to get it going but i remember being amazed.... would my idea of using a syphon in a large overflow tank to top up my barrels work, or is that a step too far?

[Bill HH]

It was to avoid the cost of a timer, but sorry if I haven't been able to explain it well enough for folk to understand.

No,you explained it perfectly with brilliant diagrams, the part i dont understand is how it helps or indeed replaces a timer. A syphon can only run down hill and in this case gravity will do that.
As for bario1's large overflow tank a syphon will be equaly unworkable, the overflow tank can only fill if its at the same level as your other tanks, therefore its just another tank.
With only 4ft head when the tanks are full its always going to be difficult to get the pressure, a pump is needed to transfer the lower water to a higher tank but that has its own set of problems.

[Kristen]

the part i dont understand is how it helps or indeed replaces a timer

Ah, gotcha. My thought was that some tank, higher up, feeds the tank-with-siphon slowly enough (e.g. tap only slightly open) so as to fill the siphon-tank, say, once a day. Then the siphon-tank would empty into, and supply, the soaker hose and water the plants (once a day QED ). No idea how to get the header tank to drip that slowly - perhaps there is a risk that it will evaporate off the tap before each drip gets big enough to "drip" ?

Its similar to the Flood & Drain irrigation (which is an alternative to capillary matting). Pots of plants on the greenhouse bench (or more typically on the floor in commercial greenhouses) are in trays of some sort, they are flooded with water which rises in the trays, and then there is a siphon that "sucks" it out of the trays into a sump tank. Water is then filtered and pumped back up to the header tank for the process to repeat. I guess there is a mechanical valve on the siphon pipe so that it doesn't open until the header tank has emptied into the trays, and the plants have sat in water for X-minutes so they can have a drink or maybe its just a mechanised "drain" valve, and no siphon required, although I imagine that a siphon would drain the trays more quickly than a sump drain, and thus the plants wouldn't sit in water for "too long"

As for bario1's large overflow tank a syphon will be equaly unworkable, the overflow tank can only fill if its at the same level as your other tanks, therefore its just another tank.

I have been thinking about that. A higher header tank would help a lot - more pressure to work with etc. What about a solar pump? It can be poxy slow, just so long as it can actually lift the water the required height. What are we talking about - 20L a day for irrigation maybe? So if it can lift 20L in 8 hours of sunshine, preferably 2 or 3 times that, then we are golden A massive row of IBC's to store rain from winter and then a poxy solar pump to "fuel" the header tank for the irrigation.

But there is cost in the solar panel and pump, and the cheap ones are pretty poxy ... might be better to blag an old fashion village pump and use that to manually pump the water into header tank every few days?

[Bill HH]

You forget that bario is Scottish and therfore doesnt want to spend a penny added to the fact that Scotland has no sun so they tell me making solar power iffy at best. You are right however in that it only needs a trickle to gradualy fill the header. I am presuming there is no electricity on site or a simple fish pond pump could gradualy fill a header tank. I think we are down to hand pumping which requires lots of porridge.

[bario1]

You're right Bill, i'll fill the header tank by hand with a leaky thimble before i'll splash out on a fancy pump! You could say i'm saving for a rainy day... and yes we get plenty of them.

[Alison]

This wasn't what I meant at all by inverted syphon. I simply meant that you connects hosepipe to the barrel outside the tunnel then dip that down underneath the tunnel foundations and up into the tunnel. The level of the pipe in the tunnel is still lower than the top water level outside so the pipe is always full and therefore water will flow the last bit up hill. This is known as an inverted syphon rather than a syphon which goes up then down (which wouldn't help you getting under the foundation ). Hope that makes sense, nothing to do with timers, personally I think you'd struggle to get a decent working system without one.


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[Alison]

Re the head of pressure thing, you really don't need much. My barrels are only on standard water butt bases so not far above ground level and they water a 20' by 10' tunnel with no problems via normal 1" (?) soaker hose.


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[redser]

Re the head of pressure thing, you really don't need much. My barrels are only on standard water butt bases so not far above ground level and they water a 20' by 10' tunnel with no problems via normal 1" (?) soaker hose.


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Agreed, even when my tank runs low the water weeps just fine, no as good as when full but good enough to keep plants ticking over.

[bario1]

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread, it's given me loads of ideas!

[johnjohn]

Just as a matter of clarification to those who use this system with a raised water butt, do you connect your soaker hose to the butt as a single hose with a stopper at the end or in a loop? see pic please. (bit rubbish but you get the idea!



I only ask as I use the soaker hose from the mains supply to soaker hose via a normal hose for my spuds, and also in the blowaway tunnel but connect it in a loop (pic 2) as it distributes water more effectively.

Would be interested in how you do it but thought that it also might help the OP?

[Kristen]

I either do mine in a loop, or connect the "feed" at the middle - so only half the distance to the furthest point compared to connecting to one end. Standard 1/2" barbed Tee connectors seem to fit OK.

[redser]

I have mine in a loop, it equalises the pressure. If you just have it in a straight line with a stopper the pressure can trail off further along the line. I use a Y junction to create the loop.