Best way to set-up temporary irrigation?

[JSUnlimited]

I bought a 2" gas water pump from Ebay capable of 150gpm. I would like to set up a means of watering the garden using water from the pond. I wish this to be temporary, as I would like to break it down during off season. I was thinking of using the typical 2" suction hose/floating strainer from the pond to the pump (aprox 10' w/1' lift.) Then maybe go to the 2" discharge type hose from the pump to the garden (aprox 250' w/maybe a 20' drop.) Once at the garden, I was thinking of splitting it down to a couple short garden hoses connected to regular lawn sprinklers. My thoughts were that the pump will run 2.5 hours at full capacity on a tank of gas. Obviously the lawn type sprinkers are not rated for a high GPM, so the pump would probably idle or mid-range. What do you guys think?

 

[MikeD74T]

Since you didn't give garden size, I made one up. 1/4" of rain on a 100'x 100' garden is about 1500 gallons. You could put up a small tank (or above ground swimming pool) on the hill, fill it with the pump, & gravity to weeper hose between the rows? The pump would only be run 10-12 minutes per day. I'm not a gardener, would 1/4" per day make a wet garden? if applied late afternoon?

 

[dubba]

IMHO drip irrigation is the only way to water a garden. I use dripworks.com. I use my well water because there is no pond nearby but the principle is the same. We pump water into 2) 275 gal tanks that are elevated 4' from garden level. The only reason that they are 4 ft is because it was convenient to hide them up there. I use an auto fill for a livestock tank to stop water flow when full & a timer at the house set to fill the tanks after we go to bed.

Most drip irrigation will water with static water pressure, just be sure it says so in the description. We let it water 24hrs/day due to rather low output with the static pressure

The drip irrigation helps me in garden layout since I actually have to plan it. Used to be the king of the "whoops the corn is shadowing the lettuce".

Also drip irrigation really cuts down on water usage & weeds. I now dread when it rains because more weeds are gonna pop up.

 

[TwinWillows]

Thanks for the link to the irrigation supplier. We're needing to get a system installed for our blueberries & peach orchard.

 

[JSUnlimited]

Without mesasuring, I'd say it's easily 100' by 100'. I'll have to check and figure out the formula from there. Thanks guys for the input. I want to keep it simple and cheap.

 

[RobJ]

100x100 pretty big. It will take some time to water. Drip is nice but it sounds like you don't have power there(the gas pump). I bought a little Robin 4 stroke water pump off ebay and used it last year. Sweet little motor and pump. 1" intake and I ran it out 3/4" pipe. It didn't have to lift that much because I left it close to the pond, but ran about 150' of 3/4" pvc then a 100' hose or 2. put 2 sprinklers together for max watering. I was pushing the water up about a 5' bank. With the throttle I could adjust the pressure(I put on a gauge). The pump runs on regular gas and runs about 1 hour at full load. So I could watch my watch and reset it. TIn the pic the gas can is 1 gallon. The thing weighs about 12#. Easy to start and run good.

I doubt if I'll ever use the pump again (going to let God take care of the watering) so if you are interested I might make you a deal.

 

[RobJ]

pic 2

 

[RobJ]

last small one...

 

[KrumpsBrother]

Drip systems require expensive filters so the emitters will not clog while using surface water.

Go with 3/4 impact sprinklers spaced out with 50% overlap. Puts out lots of water to keep pump runtime down. Less filtering required for impact sprinklers due to larger nozzle size.

KB

 

[JSUnlimited]

Rob, I already have a 150gpm pump. Thanks for the offer though. Joe

 

[RalphVa]

I've polypropylene line down to my garden from rain tanks here at the house. Then I go to a PVC distribution line along the end of the rows. Then soaker hoses are laid down each row. As an alternative to the rain tanks, I can pump from a tiny stream over to the garden. I've turn-off valves on the soaker hoses. Right now, I only have 5 rows: 1 of carrots and 4 of potatoes. The rest are cut off.

When winter comes, I just cut the PVC distribution pipe into pieces short enough to carry over to stack up and remove and coil the soaker hoses. In spring, I bring down some PVC collars and splice the PVC line back in place. Once I get too many splices, I'll replace the line. Been fine for 5 years now.

My pump is just one of those 1-2 gpm 12v pumps like TSC uses for its spray rigs. They sell the pumps separately. The rain tanks will provide a bit more flow through the 3/4" line.

If the soaker hoses get plugged (and they will) just poke a tiny hole where you have a plant or seed as you put the plant or seed in or when the plant is up.

For trees and grape vines, I just use old hoses and drill a 1/8" hole where the plant is to water it. Got this tip from a master gardener who used to grow blueberries.

Ralph