New lawn + hosepipe ban = HELP!!

Clockwork timers quite cheap (although the nice Hoselock ones no longer available, and the cheap replacements are ... cheap & break )


Only place I have seen the Hoselock one is on Amazon Marketplace for £18 and I'm a bit sceptical that they have stock as I have not found them anywhere else (I have one, and at least a year ago wanted another for a different outside tap)


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hozelock-Aqua-Control-Clockwork-Timer/dp/B0055HFB2A

so I bought one of these:



and the clockwork mechanism failed after only a month or two of use (Turn dial, immediately sprang back to "OFF"). I may just have had bad luck of course ... they are about £8-£10 so clearly "cheaper" than the Hozelock ones.

Mind you, the battery operated Hozelock ones are £20, so perhaps no point spending £18 on a poncy clockwork one!!

Note that these will NOT work on a water butt, they need MAINS PRESSURE to work (never understood the mechanics of that! but something about the back-pressure being needed to make the battery-driven valve "close"). There are other battery ones that WILL work on low pressure, so make sure you get one of those if you might want to use it for Mains tap now, and Water butt in future.

Only metering-valve I know is this one, its £40


http://shop.access-irrigation.co.uk/acatalog/Metering_Valves.html

I presume that's mains-only? (Min Pressure 0.5 Bar might you get that from a Butt?) as it has no batteries and presumably uses the water pressure to "turn" the closing valve. Could be that the valve is spring-loaded though I suppose.

 

A-M on Monday
N-Z on Tuesday
"The ..." on Wednesday
"Chez Nous" on Thursday
"Mon Repos" on Friday

 

I think the argument against sprinklers (or at least according to something I once read) is that its not about forgetting to turn them off as such, just that if they aren't suitably configured then most of the water doesn't make it to the lawn anyway.

The best example I read of is the vapour cloud setting that many sprinklers have. Instead of firing jets of water that rain straight back down, the water is sent straight up as a finely dispersed vapour. On a perfectly calm day, it does of course come more or less straight back down again, but if there is any breeze at all, the water vapour is simply blown away so that by the time it comes back down, it is not necessarily over the lawn.

Other settings can result in jets of water clearing the lawn, or great puddles forming in one place while other parts are still bone dry.

Of course its easy enough to set the sprinkler up, actually use your eyes to check where the water is landing, and then use it responsibly, but of course that would require the relevant authorities to have some sort of faith in the general public, and sadly I think that's the bit that's lacking.

 

How about a water butt pump though? The one I got reckons 32l/m. That's more than mains I think?

 

Yes, I expect that would be fine - its only "gravity" from a water butt that won't work. (Note that its pressure they need, rather than litres-per-minute. I've never understood how you can have big flow and no pressure, and vice-versa, but I believe it is possible !)

Water butt pumps may do 32l/m straight out of the pump, but ask them to go up hill, and/or through a decent length of hose, and you may find the performance falls off dramatically. I don't get 32l/m out of my mains tap!

Dunno how far your lawn is, hopefully close enough, but if more than 25M, and certainly if more than 50M, get 3/4" hose - you will get dramatically more water coming out of the end of it than 1/2" hose

(My comparison of 1/2" and 3/4" hose flow rates is here:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/geka-vs-hozelock-hose-fiittings.33636/#post-437336 )

 

P.S. and if you can easily do so (the device probably has screw-threads rather than push-fittings) put the pressure reducing device at the end of the hose, next to the drip irrigation system / soaker hose, rather than on the tap. Otherwise you will send low pressure water along the hose, and lose more pressure before it is able to actually start doing any good :(

 

Nothing that extravagent... The centre of the lawn is about 10m away from the butt.

I'll be experimenting tonight with my new butt, pump and sprinkler. Won't be using pressure reducer on this, I'll do that from mains if this turns out to be hopeless.

 

FingersCrossed. I'll be interested to hear how it goes please and what make/model of pump you got (good or bad). The ones I've been looking at are £200 and up, but I do have a long way to pump the water here :(

Of course! Sorry, confused myself between ban-breaking and ban-backing !!

 

C

Can you post a photo of your lawn in it's current state? It doesn't sound too bad judging by what you've written. Are the brown corners caused by the turf not coming into proper contact with the soil. Have you cut it yet?

 

Well first round of results are in.

The pump just doesn't provide enough pressure to use a sprinkler, has trouble turning it let alone covering a good distance. So I think a hand sprayer is the only option, should get a good distance with that judging by pressure at the end and my thumb. 140 litres lasted around 20 minutes, bit short of the 32l/m claimed! Its this pump
http://www.screwfix.com/p/titan-ttb420pmp-300w-clean-water-butt-pump-240v/40419?_requestid=1828016

I'll take a pic tomorrow. I think it is making good contact - I have patted down the brown bits. Once I lifted it up and saw that it was quite water logged under (shortly after watering) so I don't know if I might have been drowning it. No chance of that now! I'm a bit like that. The sort to over tighten a screw and strip the thread, if you know what I mean

 

I sympathise, but,.....
If you must use grey water and that is the only way, do so.
Grey water is very easy to produce.:WINK1:

I do realise the problem and the amount of investment likely to be lost, £1000 buys a lot of lawn I would imagine.
But I cant help thinking if it was layed last autumn this might not have been such a problem.
Maybe we should rethink when we do certain things in the garden.

Lots of people will be losing food crops if the dry weather continues, most without the ability to bang out £1000 on grass.

 

Didn't know there was going to be a hosepipe ban then - if there had been even an inkling no doubt folk would have done differently. Landscape contracts are being cancelled left, right and cetre - not good for that industry (nor garden centres and nurserymen)

I sowed a large area of grass last Autumn (I prefer Autumn sown for the reasons you say), but I couldn't get enough topsoil locally to finish making the seedbed ... the rest was delivered in February, so the second half of mine was sown a couple of weeks ago ...

 

I checked the price or Rolawn turf. £400 gets you 10M x 10M, I expect you would spend another £600 on topsoil etc to get it level, labour, and topdressing. So my guess is that £1,000 is a 10M square ... not much ...