hydraulic ram

[jnapier]

Anyone use a water ram to fill up a holding tank and then use gravity to water your garden???
I want to use soaker hoses or drip hoses with timers to water my garden. Any ideas, brand names, help

JIM

[Pat]

Don't soaker hoses take several psi to work? To get much flow you'd probably need something like at least 15 psi which requires a 34 ft head. Kind of a tall storage tank. Of course you might have a garden lower in elevation than your tank.

A good ram will pump that high but the flow rate will be reduced in proportion to the working head on the ram. Great for short duration high flow situations but incapable of supporting much continuous flow.

I recall the summer I hooked up a series string of soaker hoses (the ones made of recycled tires) to a 50 psi source and didn't get any water out of the last hose in line. I don't recall the total length but it wasn't that much.

Pat

[egon]

Surely can't help with the Ram pump but do keep us informed.

For the hoses Pat has already talked about the soaker type.

I'd check out a greenhouse supplies type store and see what they have for for drip systems. These would be ones with plastic distribution pipe and then individual small lines leading to the plant or Small area. There are proper fittings for doing this. If pressure is a problem some empirical analysis may tell you where larger drip holes will be required and how many one distribution line will handle.

Conversely, as it appears you have electricity you could hook up a small on demand pump that is on a timer.

If you do not have electricity a battery, solar cell and small on demand pump [Like used in recreational vehicles] with timer may work? grin:

Never having done this the above is all conjecture or maybe just hot air but I do have a soaker hose set up for my garden that is on automatic manual control! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

There may be some Israeli sites that would have information.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[jnapier]

Hey Pat,
Do you know the distance that the supply hose can be? If I have a fall of 5' and a drive line of 60 - 100 ', a 500 gal storage tank 35 height above the pump and garden. How long can the supply line be before I send it up the hill to the tank? Do you add the supply length to the hill height?

JIM

[Pat]

In a word, NO... I can't easily engineer a system for you.

I am familiar with the concept and theory but have never built one. There are sites on the web where these things are well understood as I have read on some of them a long while back, long enough I can't quote a URL.

If you elect to go pump free and rely on the tank head then due to reduced pressure the calibration of the COTS drips will quite a way off (likely unusable.) If it were me I would probably make my own calibrated drips with empirical testing to find the right hole diameter for the working head at each drip location.

Pat