Watering idea

im planting next to a river...there is no power and i cant stream the water down to my plants...instead of traveling water down to them, i came up with an idea to hook a hose to the bottom of a bucket, dump the bucket in the water and tie it to both sides of the river so that pressure from the river builds in the bucket and pushes the water out the hose...then the water will flow in a tub or barrel of some sort where i can mix plant food...im planting 20 to 30 plants in buckets and tubs...i live in nova scotia, fairly experienced grower

anyone ever done something like this
or anyone have any tips for me
maby i can even gear up some kind of irrigation system with my setup
anyone with tips please let me know

Are the plants at a lower elevation than the surface of the river, or are they higher?

there higher...thats why i cant stream the water down

Oh. OK. I was confused by your using the term "down". But if the plants are higher than the surface of the water, this won't work. The water pressure in the river can't push the water any higher than its own surface. You'll still have to use some sort of pump or something.

well thats what i thought at first but when i watched the river snap a canoe in two when it got stuck between a brigde i changed my mind...but mabey ur right that a bucket wont capture enough pressure from the river

Cmon guys dont anybody watch the history channel,its called HYDROLICS,the roman empires aquaduct system was built using this method,the more water forced into smaller pipes the more the pressure will increase,uphill or downhill is irrelevant.There is a formula to it somewhere ive seen on how far uphill you can go depending on current or some shit but it works & works well too.

If you do as you planned & string a line between the river banks & the current is decent you should have no problem,you may want to run 1/2 inch hose half way then reduce further down to 1/4 to keep good pressure,if its a real long run like a hundred yards just keep reducing the line till it reaches the garden.

should i still go with irrigation system...put a pin hole in the hose on top of the bucket so it gets water 24/7

Not unless you come up with a way to hide the bucket & hose from passer by's,a home made irrigation system will surely attract the wrong kind of attention.

Wht not just go water them in person when they need it,better safe than sorry.

I guarantee you it's not going to work. The man's not building an aqueduct, he's just running a couple of hoses. He needs some sort of mechanism to raise the water above its own level, and running it into smaller hoses doesn't do it.

well im gonna try it and ill tell u if it works...we will take it from there

Dude quit being the cloud of doom here with the negativity & no evidence that a time proven technology wont work,do a google search on water hydrolics,its a simple & ancient technology.

Lifting water above the table then feeding down hill is a gravity feed system,he is talking about a pressurized hydrulic watering system.

Here ya go,proof his exact idea will work.

YouTube - Prohibition Episode8

panhead said:

Dude quit being the cloud of doom here with the negativity & no evidence that a time proven technology wont work,do a google search on water hydrolics,its a simple & ancient technology.

Lifting water above the table then feeding down hill is a gravity feed system,he is talking about a pressurized hydrulic watering system.

Here ya go,proof his exact idea will work.

YouTube - Prohibition Episode8

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It's "hydraulics", not hydrolics, and I don't need to google it - I did a term paper on Roman aqueducts when i was studying civil engineering.

the principle you're talking about depends upon using gravity over fairly long distances to speed up large volumes of water, so that when you force it into a narrower channel it creates enough pressure to raise the column of water above it's natural height. What you're doing is artifically manipulating the hydraulic head of the water - google that one if you like, but it's a term used to define the total pressure of a column of water. The hydraulic head determines how high the column of water can rise. It's been a while since I did any work with this stuff, so maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but if i recall correctly the basic principle is to use "velocity head" (the pressure created by momentum in a moving body of water) to overcome "static head" (the natural pressure of a mass of water at rest.) You need fairly large masses of water moving at fairly high speeds to create that kind of pressure, and moving a few gallons of water through a 1-inch hose over a distance of a couple hundred feet ain't gonna generate that kind of energy.

I'm sorry, man, but for what this dude's describing, the principle just won't work. He needs a pump. Or a pair of strong legs.

you could try something in the bathtub.....running the water into a cup with some skinny hose...just to see if water flow would force above the level of the faucet....obviously the water would flow if you kept the hose at the same level as the faucet....but as you raise the hose will it flow????....just an Idea

JohnnyBravo said:

you could try something in the bathtub.....running the water into a cup with some skinny hose...just to see if water flow would force above the level of the faucet....obviously the water would flow if you kept the hose at the same level as the faucet....but as you raise the hose will it flow????....just an Idea

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Actually, if you aim the faucet at the end of the hose, that probably would work. Somewhat. Sporadically, but it would spurt a bit.

You know, a better way to explain what i was saying before is this. The water in the river doesn't want to go any higher than the surface of the river, because gravity is exerting too much force holding it down. If you want to raise the water higher than gravity is allowing it to go, you need to use enough energy to counteract the force of gravity. Just constricting the pipe into a smaller diameter won't add any energy - you need to borrow some energy somewhere else, and what the Romans figured out was that you could borrow some energy from the speed of the water. They figured out that the mass of the water, moving at a high rate of speed, created its own energy, and you could harness that energy by forcing the heavy body of rapdily moving water into a smaller space. That worked for them because they were working with tons, even hundreds of tons, of water, moving at speeds of 50 or more miles per hour. When that much water, confined in a tube, suddenly is forced into a smaller channel, it creates enough pressure to overcome the force of the gravity that's pulling it back downward.

That won't work for joesvx because he just doesn't have enough water, or any way to get it moving fast enough to overcome gravity. He's only working with a few pounds of water, moving 3 or 4 miles per hour. Such a small body of water, moving at such a low velocity, just can't build that kind of momentum, so it has no way of generating the energy to raise itself higher than gravity wants it to go. He needs a pump.

I take it you didnt even take the time to watch the movie link i posted,where it shows water being force driven over an 800 ft span,up grade, with good pressure,all by using a 5 gallon bucket & a peice of pvc pipe & 800 ft of hose.

Ive seen it being done with my own eye's when i was in Africa to bring water to a holding tank, only on a much larger scale.

this is joesvx again...im bringing the water uphill...ground level is just about a foot above water level...i think the pressure is high enough... mabey even use bigure bucket would help

Yes please keep us informed with your final results & any problems you encountered along the way,please remember to post what your solution to any problems was.

panhead said:

I take it you didnt even take the time to watch the movie link i posted,where it shows water being force driven over an 800 ft span,up grade, with good pressure,all by using a 5 gallon bucket & a peice of pvc pipe & 800 ft of hose.

Ive seen it being done with my own eye's when i was in Africa to bring water to a holding tank, only on a much larger scale.

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Yeah. I watched it. What's the point? I mean, it was a cool video and all, but it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about here. The guy in the video is clearly using hydraulic line to run water downhill. So what? We already know you can make water run downhill; we don't need YouTube to prove that. The guy who started the thread is asking whether it's possible to make water run uphill, and the answer to that is no. You can't do it without using some sort of force, and the current of a river doesn't provide enough force to do that. I don't know what you saw in Afrcia, but if you saw water running uphill, all I can say is all those stories they tell about Congolese dope must be true.

joesvx said:

this is joesvx again...im bringing the water uphill...ground level is just about a foot above water level...i think the pressure is high enough... mabey even use bigure bucket would help

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If you're only going up a foot or so, there are a couple of other things you can try when your first idea doesn't work out. One thing you could do is take your bucket with the hole in the bottom, and the hose connected to the hole, and hang it in a tree on the riverbank a couple feet above ground. Then just fill the bucket with water from the river; you won't get much pressure, but the water will flow downhill to your patch. That way you only have to haul the water a couple of yards instead of however far your patch is from the river.

The other thing you can do is scout upstream a little ways. Are there are any rapids or waterfalls, any sharp drops in the elevation of the river? If there are, and they're not too far from your patch, you can run one end of your hose into the water at that point, run the other end downhill to your patch, and siphon water downhill to the patch. Either one of these ideas have a chance of working, depending on the layout of your area.

WOW,you must just be seeing what you want to see in that scene,he walks downhill the entire way to the water source,then shows a wide angle shot of the uphill grade on the way back with water pouring out of the line,there are 2 gardens in that film,one garden with a gravity feed system & the other garden at the end of the video with a hydrolic system,thanks for the grammer lesson too.

Just because your an engineer,student or architect dont mean your research is not flawed,or that your research even applies to the variables here,im a builder(i know,bfd) & ive proven many engineers wrong over the last 40 years & seen many others proven wrong,you have absolutely no way of knowing all the variables to this mans situation yet you proclaim absolute knowlege on the subject,you have no idea of water speed,length of run ect.

The problem from believing everything thats written on paper(without ever trying) is that it gives you "book lock) meaning it causes blindness to whats right in front of your face,a common problem with many long time engineers & architect's.

How can you possibly not see evidence the water being pushed over an uphill grade in the 2nd garden at the end of that video,follow the terain closely & you'll see.Water will flow uphill if the driving force is strong enough to overcome the grade,its not rocket science.