Watering my veg patch - hands-free!

[tygerbright]

Hi all - some advice needed!

We have a raised vegetable box that sits below a conifer and hence gets little to zero rain. We'd like to make use of the runoff water from the side extension of our house to somehow make its way to the veg box and keep the area watered. Thing is .... there is an immovable shed in the way - see image below:

View media item 99616
I've considered a couple of options:

1) water butt
Install a slim mini water butt inside the shed as there is no room outside for it really. Then from the tap end of the water butt run a hose under the shed to the veg box. Thinking is that the water butt will fill and the tap will remain open so enough pressure to carry the water to the veg box. I can then choose to turn off the tap if I want to stop watering and let the butt fill again.

2) downpipe to hose
An alternative idea I have is to ignore the water butt and just use the diverter kit that came with it and run this directly from the downpipes to a hose to the veg box. So as it rains, the veg box gets watered along with the rest of the garden. It sounds simpler and cleaner but not sure if there will be enough pressure or indeed enough water to reach the veg box.

What would you guys suggest? Perhaps there is a smarter solution that I've totally missed?

 

[Ian H]

A gutter on the shed with downpipe to the veggy patch and house gutter into the shed gutter.

 

[Tigercubrider]

Put the water butt to the left of the shed.

I have a water butt about 20 feet from my house connected underground via blue water pipe to a diverter on the house gutter. This means that the waterbutt automatically fills when it rains, limited by the capacity of the butt.

You could add the shed gutter output if you wanted.

I also have a massive old polypropylene tank at the very bottom of the garden that used to be a drinks can recycling bin . The original plan was to also connect it to the house system but digging a big trench for the pipe wasn't worth it

Every now and again I use a lidl water but pump to transfer the smaller butt to the large tank
The pump was about £40
It is easy to link several butts together if the gap is long but narrow

Then connect a leaky hose to water the veg

 

[Mursal]

Put the but on the shed roof (or a bracket on the house wall) for faster watering, pipe house downpipe into it

 

[mwatsonxx]

Difficult to grow anything under a conifer due to the acidic needles that fall off.

 

[tygerbright]

Thanks for all the replies

Not sure I want to rig up addition pipe work to run water from the shed itself.

Yup - the acidic needles are an issue but have a canopy that covers the veg plot. Hoping this will do the trick for us.

If I position the butt to the left of the shed will the diverter and pipe need to run parallel to the point at which the pipe connects to the water butt inlet? Image below

View media item 99641
It's likely that I'd want to be able to turn off the tap at the water butt to to prevent over watering the veg box. If I have the diverter positioned much higher up than the water butt inlet will there be an issue with overflow?

 

[Doggit]

A normal downwater pipe diverter has an integral return fuction; you fit the diverter at the height you want to keep the butt filled to, and when the water reaches that height, the water flows back into the down pipe. If you place the water butt to the left of the shed, then you need to install the diverter kit above the shed and run a pipe across the shed to the watter butt, but have a return pipe (just a piece of hose) cut into the water butt about an inch lower than the diverter inlet, either going back to the downpipe, or just somewhere else in the garden to take away the excess water.

You can get water feed kits that are 10mm plastic pipes that have holes in them, and you can just lay these on the veg bed, but you want a control system so that you don't lose all the water in one go.

 

[tygerbright]

Hi Doggit

So something like this?

View media item 99642
Having the diverter connected higher up makes life a lot easier as it will be harder to measure levels etc and also easier to just work with from an access perspective so I like the sound of this solution.

Also, have a few flower beds in the area so can easily run the return pipe to water these

 

[Doggit]

Nice graphics; you've got it. You can run in overflow plastic pipe for rigidity, and then garden hose (or even the same stuff) for the overflow.

 

[tygerbright]

Thanks doggit for the help.

I'll get me bits ordered and this will be my weekend project .

Graphics were simple to do... Nothing more than 5 minutes using Excel...nowt fancy.

 

[Tigercubrider]

You don't need a return on all of the diverters

Water finds it's own level, and my diverter seems to have a kind of built in trough that floods and so overflows when the butt is full. Water doesn't fall down the downpipe, it spirals around the walls normally

Mine has a diverter connected to the house, then a long bit of wterpipe that I buried underground to eventually surface near the tank . I messed about with a hosepipe to establish levels but the distance between the in and out is not important. The height is

When the butt is full, it automatically dumps all rain water down the original downpipe

 

[tygerbright]

Hi Tigercubrider

So if I understand correctly, in this set up I'd run a diverter from the down pipe and then run a long flexible hose from the diverter and thread it under the shed perhaps and up into the butt inlet?

How high would the diverter need to be fit to the downpipe in this case? Same height as the butt inlet? How would I be sure I can get the right height as the distance of the downpipe to the butt will be around 4 metres?

 

[Tigercubrider]

Yes that's it

Easiest way to get the height is to use a garden hose and one of these
http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/Stanley-Water-Level-Sight-Tube/40-7178
Or

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-METRE-...731459?hash=item20e22fb783:g:E~sAAOxykmZTLo21

So long as the inlet is level with the diverter, it can go underground, or around corners
The pipe will remain full at all times