Homemade irrigation system 50 plants

Hi all,

I'm completely fed up with spending hours watering my plants, currently I'm using like a push pump with a long hose, but it's just so time consuming. I dont have easy access to the plants too so cant walk around them with a watering can.

Have any of you made a homemade system? I'm thinking I can buy a pump then connect a tube with 50 small tubes coming out of it to each plant. The water will be coming from a pre mixed container.

If you have any other suggestions that would be great. I'm not wanting to change my set up just an easy watering method.

yeah i use to multifeed rockwool .. i use a cheap 1bar pump to put the drippers in pressure
you need PC (pressure compensative) to give te same quantity of water to each plant

netafim PC drippers a ideal, i use the Jr. on a 3/4 line with 3-5mm microtubing after each PC Dripper to the plant

depending on your medium/size of your pots you want to put one or more drippers per plant

i like to put a disk filter before the drippers line .. to avoid clogging of the drippers, but im not even sure its necessary, they have an anticlogging tech built in

every pump wont work ... you need one with some pressure out
it must lift water to 10meter minimum .. which make 1.0 bar of pressure
under this the drippers wont open
if you have more lenght of irrigation line ( like 20m) then you need to use a bigger pump, the 3.5bar would be perfect

kingromano said:

yeah i use to multifeed rockwool .. i use a cheap 1bar pump to put the drippers in pressure
you need PC (pressure compensative) to give te same quantity of water to each plant

netafim PC drippers a ideal, i use the Jr. on a 3/4 line with 3-5mm microtubing after each PC Dripper to the plant

depending on your medium/size of your pots you want to put one or more drippers per plant

i like to put a disk filter before the drippers line .. to avoid clogging of the drippers, but im not even sure its necessary, they have an anticlogging tech built in

every pump wont work ... you need one with some pressure out
it must lift water to 10meter minimum .. which make 1.0 bar of pressure
under this the drippers wont open
if you have more lenght of irrigation line ( like 20m) then you need to use a bigger pump, the 3.5bar would be perfect

Click to expand...

Great, thanks! What sort of pump do I need, is it like a fish pond pump?

are you using soil ?

most pumps wont work, the flow in metercubic/hour is not important

the small square pump wont be able to power the PC drippers, then open between 0.5 and 4 bar for most
over or under these number and they stay closed

gave me some headache back in the days

what is the total lenght of your system ?

Yes it is in soil, 7 litre pots. The tent is only 8 x 4ft, I'm not sure the length of tube but wont be more than 10 meters I would imagine.

Is this the sort of pump that would do it? Any tips on how to actually use the system lol? Like how long does it take to water them all?

no these dont work
they give no pressure at all
they just piss big volumes

wow 50 plants in 2 gal pots ? that makes many drippers .. youll need more than 1 per pot .. or do you plant to build a small manifold

kingromano said:

no these dont work
they give no pressure at all
they just piss big volumes

wow 50 plants in 2 gal pots ? that makes many drippers .. youll need more than 1 per pot .. or do you plant to build a small manifold

Click to expand...

Ahh this sounds like it may be getting expensive and complicated lol. I'll have to go to a store to look at some.

Yeah I grew less last time but wanted to see results vegging for less time but putting more in. Thanks!

Some good info in this thread..

Open flow feed tube method - adjustable flow - using aquarium manifolds. (may not provide equal output to each hose!)
Fed from pump in resovoir.

TintEastwood said:

Open flow feed tube method - adjustable flow - using aquarium manifolds. (may not provide equal output to each hose!)
Fed from pump in resovoir.

View attachment 4455084

Click to expand...

Tint..would you buy the aquarium air manifold over the orbit 8 port manifold? Its the last piece of the puzzle for my setup.. input from pump is 1/2 inch tube? 1/4 inch lines to plants? Which manifold is that?

Nrk.cdn said:

Tint..would you buy the aquarium air manifold over the orbit 8 port manifold? Its the last piece of the puzzle for my setup.. input from pump is 1/2 inch tube? 1/4 inch lines to plants? Which manifold is that?

Click to expand...

The orbits work great and allow flow adjustment per port. Economical too.

I prefer faster flooding of my coco, with adequate pump pressure aquarium manifolds give me the flow.


https://www.amazon.com/s?k=aquarium+air+flow+manifold&ref=is_s

Full 1/2 lines for hydro halos.

I've been in to a store today to search for what I need. Would this pump be suitable? And also the black things that go in to the soil? Apparently they can deliver 4liters per hour.

these pumps are very strong .. 4.3 bar .. if you plan to run less than 25 meters of line its overkill imo
it can lift water up to 43 meters

and these are very noisy do you know it ? if noise is a problem for you its a nono



you can use a pump of this type that is inside your res, less noisy .. this one cost 50 euro and lift water up to 10meter (1 bar)

how many meters of drippers line do you need to run ? and how many drippers total (50 plants in 7 liter pots, minimum 3 dripers per pot ??)? if it the case you will probably need a big ass pump

try to find the netafim PC drippers way better quality, i dont know those you posted .. probably ok but i dont know

Put or build a big tray for the pots to sit in and just flood the tray so they wick the water up from the bottom. Suck up the excess with a shop vac or have the tray elevated with a ball valve drain to run off excess. Easy to move plants with no tubes, drippers etc in the way. Easy-peasy.

Most use pumps like this....sized to meet needs.
Usually available at Pet stores - Fish Aquarium stores - Pond supplies

kingromano said:

these pumps are very strong .. 4.3 bar .. if you plan to run less than 25 meters of line its overkill imo
it can lift water up to 43 meters

and these are very noisy do you know it ? if noise is a problem for you its a nono

View attachment 4455756

you can use a pump of this type that is inside your res, less noisy .. this one cost 50 euro and lift water up to 10meter (1 bar)

how many meters of drippers line do you need to run ? and how many drippers total (50 plants in 7 liter pots, minimum 3 dripers per pot ??)? if it the case you will probably need a big ass pump

try to find the netafim PC drippers way better quality, i dont know those you posted .. probably ok but i dont know

Click to expand...

Ahh, I thought best to have more power than not enough lol. They do have a smaller one at 2.4bar, the noise isnt really an issue.

I'm not sure how many drippers either lol, I was hoping 2 but the more I think of it, it may need 3 to get the water to spread evenly, or do you think with 2 the water will still spread around the pot?

We have 64 plants in a room. Auto feeding and recirculating. 1 55 gal drum per side with pump attached to timer inside ran to PVC pipes all the way down with tubes coming our for each plant with a halo top feed and flow switch to help control pressure. Sitting on flood tables that drain through PVC to our collection reservoir that pumps it back into the main. Simple and very effective.

OldMedUser said:

Put or build a big tray for the pots to sit in and just flood the tray so they wick the water up from the bottom. Suck up the excess with a shop vac or have the tray elevated with a ball valve drain to run off excess. Easy to move plants with no tubes, drippers etc in the way. Easy-peasy.

Click to expand...

Long delay in reply but I'm gonna give this a go. How long do you leave the plants to soak in the water? I'm just going to flood the bottom of my actual tent, it's not quite level but should be ok if I pour as much water as poss in lol. Havent got good access to be able to build a tray

fumaganja said:

Long delay in reply but I'm gonna give this a go. How long do you leave the plants to soak in the water? I'm just going to flood the bottom of my actual tent, it's not quite level but should be ok if I pour as much water as poss in lol. Havent got good access to be able to build a tray

Click to expand...

If I'm in a rush to water my plants and just guesstimate how much they will take I dump that into the pot and take off. Lots runs thru into the tray and I might leave it overnight and if there is still water left in the morning then I'll get it out. A good method is use a small towel. just roll it up and lay it in the tray then wring it out into an empty tray for disposal. If humidity is low then wring it out on the floor or tray and let it evaporate. Preferably I'll empty the trays an hour after watering. If the plant itself was really dry it will pull up as much water as it needs in that time and the media will be totally saturated too.

That being said I have intimate knowledge of how much water each of my various pots needs when they are in need of watering. My current Hindu Kush flowering plant in a 7gal pot takes 7-8L of water every 4 - 5 days. I judge the actual need by lifting the pot. 4 days after a good water it's light as a feather compared to freshly watered. You can figure 1/4 the volume of the pot to saturate it when it's dry enough to need watering with soilless peat or coco based media tho coco need much more frequent watering than peat based like the ProMix HP I use. Soak/dry/soak . . .

A good method is to get a bunch of those Tiki Torch wicks and put maybe 4 in a 5gal pot. Then have the pots sitting on anything that holds them an inch or so off the tray so you can just leave extra in the tray for the media to suck it up over a day or so or bottom feed your plants and let it wick up to keep the media moist all the time. It's a very old method of watering plants and evaporation from the trays will keep RH up where needed but conversely will keep RH up where it's not needed as well. Those platforms made to elevate fabric pots should work great but DIY is a lot cheaper and there's likely all sorts of stuff locally available you could use for that a lot cheaper.

So many ways to skin the watering cat. lol

I threw up some pictures of my auto systems in this thread:


You can get a 50 pack of 360 degree drippers off amazon for $15 CDN btw.