Automatic Irrigation - by Snow White

We all have lives away from growing our plants and sometimes you've got to go away and leave your beloved babies to their own devices.

So what can you do?....simple....automate your system!

This is my step-by-step guide with full pics on how I am creating my automatic irrigation system for my veg cupboard.

So Firstly...lets go shopping....

6 360 Adjust Dripper On Stake
0 13 mm Flexi Tube (1 Mtr)
5 Delivery Pipe 4mm (Soft)
1 Air Pump Rena 100
1 Airstone 15 Cm
2 Silicon Airline Tubing (1M)
1 8 Outlet Manifold (M.BSP)
1 13 mm Manifold Tee (F.BSP)
1 25L Blue Bucket with Lid
3 13 mm Ldpe Pipe (1 Mtr)
1 Variable water pump with 13mm outlet



Now that we have all the bits.....lets start setting things up.......

Connect the drippers to the 4mm delivery pipe, cutting the pipe to the desired length.....



Place a dripper stake into each pot with irrigation pipe connected.




Run all the irrigation lines out to the same spot....



Now connect all delivery pipes to the 8 piece manifold....



and connect the T-piece to the 13mm irrigation line and then screw in to the manifold....



now we can attach the line securely using the 13mm saddle clamps.....nice and tidy.....




Next step is to setup the res and connect the air pump/airstone and then the 13mm irrigation line is connected to the water pump which sits in the res. Simple. I will also need to grab a couple of digital timers for accurate programming of the system......but we'll come to that over the weekend when I get around to it.....for now this is all I've done.

I have an irrigation setup in my flowering room already, using exactly the same components and principals.

Very nice post! Thanks!!!

thanks tm21thc.....so we continue.....

connect up the air stone (these come in many shapes and sizes) to the airline....



and then connect the airline to the airpump....



make sure the air pump is above water level, or condensation can form on the air line and run down the line to the air pump, which is NOT water proof. We do not want to create any fire hazards here.

and make sure power is well out the way too....I raised my power bar higher up.



place the airstone and water pump into the bucket, connecting up the water pump to the 13mm irrigation line.



fill with water and we're good to go.



I just need to drill holes in the bucket lid now for the cables/pipe and get some digi timers. Then we can set up a schedule.

I know I will need to water my mothers once a day, as they are only in 500ml pots. I just need to work out how long I need to run the water pump for.

Hey zed...this pump is 800 LPH. I'm sure a 300 or 400 would work fine as well.

So I've got 2 new digital timers now, one to control the air pump as I don't want to leave it running 24x7...and the other to control the water pump which is attached to the drippers....



Both clocks on the timers are in sync, but they have not been programmed yet. I will do this later when I have worked out how long I need to run the pump for. At a guess I would say 5 mins every other day, but I'll run the pump later to test everything and time how long it takes for my girls to get a good drink.

Everything is connected up in the res and the lid secured in place.....



The dripper lines run into the cupboard to the inidividual dripper stakes in each pot....





The system is now ready for use. The use of the digital timers gives a lot of flexibillity with programming. I will post the schedule I set up once I have worked it out finally.

Timers are all set for the watering schedule now.

Schedule for veg cupboard:

The air pump runs every day for an hour. 11am-12pm.

Then the water pump will run for 3 mins on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from 11:57am - 12pm.

The mix in the res is just a very light chemical plant feed by westland. It's just general purpose. I didn't want to leave organic nutes mixed up for a whole week as they would really STINK! So hopefully my mothers won't mind it too much.

Schedule for flowering room:

The air pump runs every day for an hour. 12pm-1pm.

Then the water pump will run on Wednesday and Sunday for 15 mins from 12:45pm - 1pm.

The mix in this res is just plain PHd water, as I am flushing 2 of my girls at the moment. My clones in flower are still being fed, so they have all been given a guano soil feed which should do them nicely for the next week.

And that's it......we'll see if I got all the timings right next week when I get back! Fingers crossed!!

Snow, that is one nice setup. You pick up the submersible from an aquarium shop? I don't know much about those guys, but they don't drop anything in the water, do they?

Also - do those heads let you adjust flow rate for each plant? It'd be nice to water containers of different sizes by adjusting individually and calibrating.

Cheers,
cee