water DIY fertigation water wand system

With summer setting in & temps cracking 100 I'm starting to have to water my plants more often. I've been feeding my plants Maxibloom 1tsp/gallon of water just using a 2 gallon watering pail but it takes quite a while to water all 14 plants. 
 
So to speed things up a bit I finally built this system I've had kicking around in my head for a few years.
 
Parts list:
 
Large heavy duty trash can or barrel
1/2" PVC pipe
(1) 1/2" T joint
(2) 1/2" slip fit to female threaded adapters
(1) 1/2" slip fit valve, plastic
(1) 1/2" threaded metal valve
1 pond pump (I think this one is 1/5 hp)
 
Optional:
Teflon tape
PVC primer
PVC glue
 

 
Pretty simple to rig up. Just need one of the female threaded adapters at the bottom to screw on to the pump, T fitting about 3/4 of the way up w/ the plastic valve, then one more female threaded piece at the top to accept the metal valve. Make sure the tube sticks up above your lid a couple inches. Use a small hole saw to make a hole in the lid for the pipe.
 
I found that simply press fitting everything works well enough, no need to actually glue it.
 

 
Lower valve is for mixing the nutrients. Just close the top one & let it recirculate for a bit. It also serves as a pressure relief for when you have the water wand connected. This pump is an impellor driven pump, not a piston pump so it does alright with back pressure but the bottom valve also lets you kind of adjust flow.
 

 
 
Even with the bottom valve open all the way you still get pretty good flow out of the top. 
 

 
With hose & water wand attached
 

 
 
So did some flow testing, with the water wand attached I get about 2 gallons per minute. With just the hose & no wand I get about 5 gallons per minute. Looks like it will work pretty well, only took maybe 20 minutes to cut and assemble.

DUUUUUDE!  Thats pretty slick and if you are talking about using the Maxi at that level then it must be working pretty good.  

Super awesome! Love it when experiments/projects are done and better yet explained.

, Walter

Do you have good pressure when the hose is extended ? Thats a great idea!

LUCKYDOG said:

Do you have good pressure when the hose is extended ? Thats a great idea!

Click to expand...

 
It's pretty decent, I did the flow tests with the hose extended. I could stand a stronger pump but it ends up being right about 2 gallons per minute with the wand attached, closer to 5 gpm without it. The pump I'm using was an old koi pond pump I got for free from a friend. I'll check the model # & specs here in a bit.

Great idea!

as a 2.0 version consider using a decent diaphragm pump iinsted.
as they are a pd pump, they develop much higher flows at pressures losses you would expect with hoses+nozzles etc.
 
they are not terribly expensive. i suspect the pump you have if purchased brand new would be in the same ball park as a really nice used diaphragm pump. ~50 60 bucks

Pretty sweet setup. I am actually looking to do something very similar for my 55 gal compost brewer I am building. I would like to be able to just pump it straight into my irrigation system. 2gal/minute would suit me just fine, but I don't think a little pump like that will be able to hold the pressure I need on all of my drip tape. You are definitely giving me some ideas though, thanks!

can you even pump compost water without cloging the tape?

seems like you would need a jet type irrigation pump. even so the particulates would be hard on the impeller, probably go with something thats all iron... not cheap.

queequeg152 said:

can you even pump compost water without cloging the tape?

seems like you would need a jet type irrigation pump. even so the particulates would be hard on the impeller, probably go with something thats all iron... not cheap.

Click to expand...

 
As long as you are using a mesh bag for to hold the compost during brewing, it should be no issue since the solids never make it into the water (in theory). On top of that, I have a 100 micron filter at the main inlet in my fertigation system to prevent any solids from making it into the drip tape.
 
I don't want to hijack TXCGs thread on this, I will post up some plans for my brewer in a couple of days when I get done with the drawings and parts lists.

Alright, so after using this for about a week I must say it kicks ass compared to how I was doing this before. Flow rate is pretty good, takes about a minute to water each 5 gallon bucket. Takes 5 or so min to water the giant pots but I can just prop the wand up & let it do its thing. 
 
I did some sciencing with pre-mixing nutes the day before & my pH raised from 6.5-7.3 overnight so looks like with this dry nute mix it's best to just mix the solution the day you're going to use it or you'll have to re-balance the pH the next day. Not sure what caused the rise in pH since I don't see anything settling out of the solution & the EC held steady. 
 
The only thing I suggest is don't buy a cheap ass hose like I did, shitty thing kinks like nobody's business & is the only frustrating part of this setup.