Water pumps and watering

[GuerillaGreenThumb]

Hey guys I’ve finished up prepping a plot for this season and I’m considering my watering options. My plot is about 125 metres from a water source and the terrain goes up around 100 metres over that distance. A 1 inch Honda pump has a head of about 40-44 metres. Would the head increase and be able to handle that head and distance if I decrease the hose size to 12 mm garden hose or 18 mm? Would also be much easier transporting and hiding garden hoses as a posed fo somehow rolling out and walking in a big roll of poly pipe. I don’t want to bring in a bigger pump because I’m trying to keep noise down and anyway bigger pumps have a smaller head .Also if the pump head idea won’t work and I have to pump it as far as I can into drums or just walk it from the creek, how much water should I be giving to the plants? The holes are all roughly 4 ft diameter x 1.5-2 feet deep and roughly what harvest do you think I can roughly expect with that size hole and fortnightly watering/training and a full season starting indoors in July?

 

Thanks [emoji120]

 

 

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[merl1n]

Would the head increase and be able to handle that head and distance if I decrease the hose size to 12 mm garden hose or 18 mm? 

 

In theory, yes. But there can be a few variables. By decreasing the tubing size the pressure will increase, but will reduce the volume of flow. Depending on the pump, you can get to a point where the decrease in tubing size can place too much back pressure on the pump and your pumps efficiency will decrease. Trying to find that 'sweet spot' can be a case of trial and error or if you're a bit of a math magician you could try using some of the formulae for fluid dynamics. Something like this Darcy-Weisbach Pressure and Major Head Loss Equation (engineeringtoolbox.com)

 

 how much water should I be giving to the plants? 

 

That's a bit of a 'How long is a piece of string?' sort of a question.

I say this because it really can depend on the type of soil you have. If it's sandy the water will drain away real quick, where as if it's clay type soil there will be bugger all drainage.

How can you tell what soil type you have? Well, here's a bit of an ol' skool method (not scientific) that 'Farmer John' used to use.

Take a marble sized bit of dirt, roll it into a ball. Does it keep it's ball shape? Yes/No? Yes-It contains some clay. No-It's primarily sand.

Roll the dirt between your hands into a cylinder shape, now, pull on either end of the cylinder. If you can pull it out further than it's diameter before it breaks there's too much clay and it needs more decomposed veg matter to help break up the clay component.

If you take a piece about the size of a match head, place it in the palm of your hand and spit on it. Using your thumb, squeeze the soil, spreading it over the palm of your hand. It 'should' feel slightly gritty and not too slippery. No grit means no sand, too slippery means too much clay.

A good type of soil is what they call a 'sandy loam'. It has some sand to allow for some drainage, but it also has some slipperiness to allow for some fluid retention.

 

 

 The holes are all roughly 4 ft diameter x 1.5-2 feet deep and roughly what harvest do you think I can roughly expect with that size hole 

 

It's impossible to say. The general theory is that the growth above the soil is equivalent to the root system below the soil. So if your plant gets to 2m tall x 2m wide, your root system will also be 2m x 2m below the surface. So I doubt your 1.5-2ft deep is going to be anywhere near enough. As for the harvest, ahh now, trying to calculate this is every growers dream. Some strains may grow short and stout but have really dense buds. Some would say dense buds is what they want, but dense buds reduce airflow and can cause mould to flourish. Some would say they want tall, lanky plants. But if you're growing in a confined space tall and lanky can be a real bastard to manage.

 

Merl1n

Edited June 11, 2021 by merl1n

[stonher]

merln covered it great, could be worth lookin at a halfway pump to- so 2 pumps, without knowin ya climate or soil and also what competes with ya holes, other trees plants, can have big effect on what u get out. , id bank on per wk 20 -50l per hole

[Rompaswampa]

Reducing the hose diameter would also decrease the head I believe, is it a possibility to dig a holding dam at your site and one half way up, you could pump up the slope in 2 stages.

[Rompaswampa]

Reducing the hose diameter would also decrease the head I believe, is it a possibility to dig a holding dam at your site and one half way up, you could pump up the slope in 2 stages.

Your holes are plenty big enough I believe soil importance is over stated generally your limiting factors will be sunlight and water especially in a guerilla setting

[highbreed]

best solution to guerrilla watering I found  is building yourself a small roof out of polycarbonate using 220l drums as tanks to catch the water...all you need is 3 sheets of 2.5 m polycarbonate roof sheets, 4 x 220l drums, 2.5m of plastic gutter, 2 lengths of 4 x 2 baton and 4 x 2.5m steel stakes as uprights...you can use some shade cloth or camo net to cover it all....you can easily carry this into the bush in 3 runs....once set up you will never ever need water again!!...I have used this system to feed 4 plants for 5 years now and never looked close to running out I got 880l of water onsite and most I was out was 400l....this year I'm investing in some blu mats and another drum raised up to feed them for me!!....this system made life so much easier for me and with the blu mats I doubt I will need to do much at all.

[flamstaa]

If solar panels are possible you might want to look into submersible  pumps. I would definitely be aiming for the 750W model with 140 metre head in your case. My experience with advertised head on pumps is they are 'best case scenario' and real world performance often falls short of advertised capabilities

 

Before knowing about submersible pumps I had a site with around 30 metre elevation but water had to travel nearly 700 metres in total. I ran a 240V, 0.75kw vertical multistage pump with an 80 metre head. I ran that of a 3.7KW generator. That just gave me about 15-20 litre per minute flow rate at end site, well below the  30LPM I should have been getting.

 

If you run pipe that high every join/connection will have to be hose clamped and what Rompaswampa  said about reducing outlet size reducing head is correct. I discovered that the hard way, laying 25mm pipe then buying a pump with 40mm outlet. Expensive mistake!

 

These guys sell radio controlled on/off switches. I used one. I could turn my pump on/off from 700 metres away.

 

Good luck. I was hoping to reprise my site this coming season but my knee is fucked