Posted by Matt from CT on July 04, 2011 at 16:06:17 from (68.246.119.244):
In Reply to: garden irrigation posted by Mark on July 04, 2011 at 10:35:54:
My experience when I tried it was I used an awful lot of gas for the amount of water delivered...looked impressive while running though. Some of the inefficiency was likely using garden hoses and bargain store sprinklers...still my gut says it was a fundamental mismatch between too much pump and too little nozzle that was most of the inefficiency.
The very generic rule of thumb is 1" of rain per week, which works out to 5/8ths of a gallon per square foot. Your mileage may vary based on soil, climate, mulching, cultivation, and plant life stages...but it seems to be a good point to start planning and then adjust based on your observations from there.
If I was to use the gas pump again, I'd redesign the system to use a 300 gallon tote tank (cheap to buy) and drip lines. Specifically drip lines which are hoses/plastic pipe with pin holes...soaker hoses use a membrane that require more pressure then a tote tank on the ground could provide.
I have a 1600 s.f. garden, so if I ran lines around the garden that would make 5 zones, which could be controlled by a valve or just which one I thread on.
I'd only have to run the pump 3, 4 minutes to fill the tote at high volume/low pressure -- that's a total of maybe 20 minutes a week. Takes a lot longer running higher pressures / lower volume to feed sprinkler heads, and you'd need enough sprinkler heads to match the pump capacity.
(For now, I'm working from home and use a diverter valve off my sump pump which runs regularly anyways. Not enough pressure to run a sprinkler, but I just go out every 3-4 hours and move the open end of the hose to flood another section.)
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Today's Featured Article - Hydraulics - Cylinder Anatomy - by Curtis von Fange. Let’s make one more addition to our series on hydraulics. I’ve noticed a few questions in the comment section that could pertain to hydraulic cylinders so I thought we could take a short look at this real workhorse of the circuit. Cylinders are the reason for the hydraulic circuit. They take the fluid power delivered from the pump and magically change it into mechanical power. There are many types of cylinders that one might run across on a farm scenario. Each one could take a chapter in
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