Soaker Hose fed by water tank

pinksleepybear

Has anyone got any experience of using a soaker hose fed by a water tank? Alternatively, is anyone good at calculating the water pressure?

I'm (well OH is actually) building a polytunnel on my allotment. We're not allowed to use hoses to water so as to prevent excess water use. I think I will be able to fill a tank (using a bucket or via rainfall) and attach soaker hoses to it to water inside the polytunnel.

Has anyone tried this?

This is the sort of hose I would use - http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=9218435&ecamp=trf-005&CAWELAID=266992402

My allotment is on a slope, so I could have the tank significantly higher than the polytunnel - does anyone know the formula to calculate the required height?

Any advice appreciated!

jabba4

I'm going to be setting up the same thing on my allotment. The people on the plot next to me do it, and it works brilliantly. They use a large water butt with a tap at the bottom (to connect the hose to). The butt itself is only about 8 inches or so off the ground, just sitting on bricks. It doesn't need to come out at any real pressure because you only want it to trickle anyway.

kate83

No idea how you work it out I'm afraid but when I was researching drip irrigation I found a video of some africans irrigating their whole plot with a large bucket that was 1m off the ground. I was planning on doing mine about the same as I have some shelves that are about that big and doing nothing

tangojulie

We have put a rainwater tank about 1m off the ground (on strong supports!) to feed hoses in the garden. I put a 22-22-15 pushfit tee in the draw-off pipe, and plugged in a 1m x 15mm acrylic tube pointing upwards and open at the top. In the tube is a small fishing float, which tells us the level in the tank, and hence (if we needed to know) the water pressure.