'Tis gardening season and I'm redoing my back yard. Being a geek, I want to set something up which will leave me free to do geeky things while the garden waters itself.

My first thought is to buy a small solar panel, a motorcycle battery and an electronic timer. I could have my gutter water run into a bucket. The solar panel would trickle charge the battery, and an electronic timer would have the pump turn on at some sort of interval sucking water out of the bucket and pushing it down a watering tube.

I've never done such a thing before, so I'm hoping to get feedback from anyone who has experience in anything close to this :) Do they even make 12v timers? Would a cheap 1W solar panel be enough to keep the battery charged? Could the pump/timer and solar cell be in parallel with the battery?

Thanks, -Ethan

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Put the barrel uphill from your garden... then use gravity feed. Now the battery is only needed for a valve and the timer.

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Perhaps you could negotiate a deal with the rabbits. If they'll haul water... you'll assure carrots in the Fall.

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Perhaps one of the DPC could help you in operating this apperatus.

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On a second serious attempt to help you in your quest... if you adapt the info. here about watering cattle to watering garden, all the formulas and ideas should still apply. Solar, Wind, electricity are all discussed.

There is also a Yahoo! Group on Ponding. Although it's not very active.

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'Tis gardening season and I'm redoing my back yard. Being a geek, I want to set something up which will leave me free to do geeky things while the garden waters itself.

My first thought is to buy a small solar panel, a motorcycle battery and an electronic timer. I could have my gutter water run into a bucket. The solar panel would trickle charge the battery, and an electronic timer would have the pump turn on at some sort of interval sucking water out of the bucket and pushing it down a watering tube.

I've never done such a thing before, so I'm hoping to get feedback from anyone who has experience in anything close to this :) Do they even make 12v timers? Would a cheap 1W solar panel be enough to keep the battery charged? Could the pump/timer and solar cell be in parallel with the battery?

Thanks, -Ethan

Just throwing a few random thoughts into the mix. IIRC, you're in Seattle, which is a bit north of me - I'm in the SF Bay Area. We've got a good sized solar array on the roof of the house, and it produces about 8 to 10 Watts / sq foot when all is said and done.

In your shoes, I'd budget for no more than 7 to 8 watts / sq foot, and work based on that. The other gotcha is that the voltage output from the panels is quite a variable quantity. Anywhere from 10 to 16, based on how much sunlight they're getting. So you'd probably need something if you were to simply attach them to a car battery.

Using a gravity feed (as suggested by Feet1st) has two distinct advantages, IMHO:

1. Much less power needed from the solar setup, just enough to run the valve/timer.

2. No risk of running a pump dry if you don't have rain for a week or two. All jokes about Seattle aside, I don't know what your rainfall pattern is - we can go months at a time with no rain, here in the Bay Area.

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Looks like they've gotcha covered here. Solar power, and smaller pump. Now ya gotta talk about the reality of the cost :) Solar panels aren't cheap. Especially as you add voltage regulaters etc. to the fold.

Here's another outfit.

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Here's a little pump system someone installed here in the UK a few years ago. It is still running today.

Clicky.

DC pumps and DC gate valves are a dime a dozen in the automotive world. Tho if you go to any repitable appliance parts whare house they should sell them also. Also Dc timers are out there as i put a dc back up timer on my brothers House irrigation system back in oklahoma. Tho i am sure you could easily adapet the mini solar panels they sell for out door walk way lights which either run as 12 or 28 volt into the system.

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My two bob

Don't go into solar panels (etc...) at all, just get a timer for your tap, I think in OZ it's about $100 for a timer and micro irrigation system that will do for a reasonably sized garden, my brother uses one and is happy with it.

I personally grow a fairly large garden, I usually water at about dawn and find some nice quiet time in watering and weeding it, but of course that's just me.

[aside]
There are some very nice tomatoes called "Tommy Toes", they just a bit bigger than a cherry tomato that are heritage (you can keep the seed, and you will have the same type of tomato next year), in truth they are like weeds, plant them in a patch and they will come up year after year, it's not a bad thing.[/aside]

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When I lived in the city, I used two 35 gallon pickle barrels attached to the downspouts in the back of my house. I put them up on 6" cinder blocks and the kids painted them with funky flowers and stuff. At the bottom of the barrel, I cut and glued in a faucet so I could attach a hose and water the flower garden using gravity. The driving force behind this was NOT to use CITY WATER to water the garden.
I couldn't use a spray nozzle (or my thumb), 27" of water in the barrel equaled only a couple of pounds of pressure, so I just moved the hose around in the garden.
Since I was using the spigot to control the flow (the human element!), the barrels would overflow sometimes. That makes for skeeter heaven!
There are some pretty good mechanical timers on the market that just screw into a faucet and require no electricity at all (MELNOR). They are based on time or water flow and cost around 20 duckets. It would be nice to have one that would measure pressure so you could keep the barrel topped off without overflowing and also be able to water for so many minutes a day.
I don't know what the pressure drop across those new fangled soaker hose thingies are but you could take an old garden hose and punch a bunch of large holes with a nail or something. Use regular hose to get where you want to water, and then attach a piece of 'soaker' hose. Depending on the area you're watering, 70 gallons isn't much if it doesn't rain frequently so 'soaking' would be the way to go.
I put screens in the gutters where the downspouts came down to prevent leaves and sediment from getting in the barrels and clogging up the faucet.
I was thinking along the lines that you were, until the price tag got up to a hundred bucks, and it wasn't simple anymore.
Hope my experience helps!

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For the record... how can you be "off topic" in a thread you create... in the CAFE??

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
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For the record... how can you be "off topic" in a thread you create... in the CAFE??

Beats me, but I did it :)

Anyway, thanks everyone for their suggestions. I'll decide on a battle plan and post how it goes.

-E

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