Life's Bounty

My Lifestyle Blog

  • Home
  • Travel
    • General
      • Armchair Inspiration
      • Travel Tips
    • Africa & Middle East
      • Morocco
      • Dubai
      • Egypt
      • Jordan
    • Asia
      • Borneo
      • China
      • Hong Kong
      • India
      • Nepal & Bhutan
        • Bhutan
        • Nepal
      • Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia
        • Cambodia
        • Laos
        • Thailand
        • Vietnam
    • Australasia & Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Vanuatu
    • Europe
      • Denmark
      • England
      • Greenland
      • Iceland
      • Russia, Belarus and the Baltic States
      • Spain & Portugal
    • Latin America
      • Ecuador & Galapagos
      • Mexico, Guatemala & Belize
      • Peru
    • North America
      • Canada
  • Garden
    • General
    • Maintenance
    • Plants
  • Kitchen
    • Recipes
    • Drinks
    • Equipment
    • Preserving Methods
  • Craftroom
    • Bath & Beauty
    • Cards
    • Featured Artists
    • Jewellery
    • Other crafts
    • Powertex
  • Gift Ideas
  • About Me

Gravity-Fed Garden Irrigation from Water Tanks

January 8, 2016 By sue 2 Comments

I wrote in an earlier post about Water Tanks for the Garden that I had installed 2 water tanks and was waiting for summer to see whether my planned system would work. There wouldn’t be enough pressure from the tanks to power a regular watering system unless I used a pump and I wanted to avoid doing that but my property is on a slope so there should be some pressure from gravity (and the Tank Guy thought this should be enough).

I asked a couple of different “garden irrigation specialists” to come round and give me a quote for setting up a system for me. Both were extremely rude about my plans and seemed to think that it was only worthwhile using their conventional systems. One, when I pushed a bit harder, said that it would cost me well over $1000 to set up a complicated system of pumps, pipes and valves – this was before he even got to the actual irrigation piping.

Weeper hose

Weeper hose

Somewhat taken aback by their refusal to consider anything a bit different, I resolved to work out how to do it myself. After a bit of research I discovered ‘weeper’ hose that allows water to just ooze gently out of the pipe, and requires very low water pressure so I thought it might work for me.

My first attempt wasn’t very successful but then I read the information more closely and saw that weeper hose wasn’t recommended for slopes.  Hmmm. I rearranged the hose so that it went in wide sweeps across the slope rather than down it and got great success (if you can call water dribbling out of a pipe success!). So then I went about installing the pipe properly, burying it under the layer of mulch as I went.

Use of pipe connectors to set it all up

Use of pipe connectors to set it all up

Used this way it is supposed to be much more efficient use of water, requiring 70% less than normal watering systems as the water is delivered directly to the root zone of the plants and isn’t exposed to as much evaporation from the wind and sun. I needed more than one length of pipe to be able to snake it around all my plants and after some experimentation found that it was best if I used ordinary hose to come down the slope to where I wanted the watering to begin and then lay out the weeper hose in wide sweeps across the slope as before. This required a bit of ingenuity and various pipe connectors to set up – but it works.

Last summer, I used this system effectively to water about 50m2 of garden and my plants thrived. The 1000 litres lasted about 4 hours dispensed through about 60m of weeper hose. About 1-2 hours per week of watering seemed to be about right.  The tank of water doesn’t last more than a month at that rate but in Auckland at least it usually doesn’t go very long without rain and the tank fills again from the roof very quickly.  Even if I had to resort to filling the tanks from the mains water system from time to time, I still have a very simple, efficient and effective method of watering my garden.

P1080550

Can you spot the water tank?

I have now bought a further 3 tanks that much to my surprise fit neatly into different corners of the garden and, with their green colour, nobody even sees that they are there until I point them out. They have all been filled over the winter (pumped from the tank that collects the water from the roof) and I am almost there with setting up the weeper hose system for all of them. My intent is to be able to water everything using this method except my vegetable gardens that I am happy to water by hand.

 

P1080846

Two water tanks in the back corner

Share this:

  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Garden, Infrastructure

Comments

  1. Josh says

    February 2, 2022 at 9:52 am

    Great blog thanks.

    What weeper hose did you use.?

    Reply
    • sue says

      February 2, 2022 at 5:46 pm

      I ended up using a mix but it was mostly Aquapore brand.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Life’s Bounty is about all the things I enjoy experiencing, creating, and sharing. Join me as I travel in search of new experiences; coax more produce from my backyard in Auckland, New Zealand and preserve the harvested bounty; and try my hand at making anything from cider to jewellery to cards to gift packs of soap.
Adventure Tours Australia
Peregrine Adventures AU

Connect with me

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest

Sign up for weekly updates

Categories

Tags

Apple Arctic Armchair Inspiration Aubergine Australia Banana Bath and Beauty Berries Bhutan Blueberries Broad Beans Card Techniques Cheese-making China Chutney and Relish Courgette Drinks Edible Flowers Eggplant Feijoas Figs Galapagos Gift Ideas Ginger Greenland Guatemala Herbs Iceland Jams Jellies and Marmalades Jewellery Techniques Lemon Lime Mexico Nepal Preserving Recipe Recipes Russia & Baltic States Sculpture Strawberries Tomato Travel Travel Tips Vegetables Zucchini

Copyright © 2022 Sue from Life's Bounty · Log in

Posting....
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.