Gardena water meter

[Boringgeoff]

I have drippers set up on the raspberries and grapes, each morning I turn the tap on and leave it running while I nip into town and buy the daily paper. When I get back I turn the water off, the paper run usually takes 15- 20 minutes. The water supply is from rainwater tanks, which at this time of year can start running a bit low.
Recently I purchased a Gardena Water Smart Flow meter from Bunnings, hooked it up to the dripper line to the rassies and turned it on, 17L/minute checked the grapes, about the same. Yikes! That means at 35 L/min x 15 min's they're getting about 525 Litres! No wonder the tanks were getting low each summer. I've learnt my lesson, now turn the drippers on for 5 minutes. It has different modes you can select L/min or total used in one watering and a couple of others. Since then we've used it to measure drippers at the Fig tree, lawn watering and so on. We don't leave it hooked up permanently but stored for future use. I checked its accuracy with measuring jug and it's spot on, a great water saving device.

Cheers,
Geoff.

[Wrongwayfirst]

It could depend on your drippers. 4LPH drippers will use only that, so if you have 20 drippers @ 4LPH = 80LPH = 1.3 litres per minute.
so flow of 17 lpm = 1020 LPH /4 = 255 drippers , that many drippers should deserve 500 litres��

[damian]

I have a mechanical one. I don't think they offer tham anymore. I have a mechanical tap timer and I use it everyday. I've had it about 23 years but it's pretty secondhand now.

I had an electronic system and I have a new one with central controller with 4 (I think) solenoids I've not yet set up.

I took the basic electronic unit out of service because it would not always shut off. We have very good water pressure here, close to 100 psi. A lot of the units are designed for about 45 psi, 70 absolute maximum.

[Bohdan]

It could depend on your drippers. 4LPH drippers will use only that, so if you have 20 drippers @ 4LPH = 80LPH = 1.3 litres per minute.
so flow of 17 lpm = 1020 LPH /4 = 255 drippers , that many drippers should deserve 500 litres😁

Wouldn't the flow rate depend on the supply pressure?

As the water source is tanks I assume that a pump was involved.

[ericks2]

I also plan to run drippers from our water tanks. My plan is to make a couple of auto ball valves due to the fact that the pressure will be low. I will measure the amount of water in the tanks to determine how much we using and adjust accordingly...Glad you found a solution for your problem :)

[Boringgeoff]

Yes there is a pump, though the raspberries and grapes are down the slope from the shed we could use gravity and timers. The dripper lines have been added to over a period of a few years so are not all the same type of dripper but all are flow rate adjustable. My point was, what a handy device the meter is.

Cheers,
Geoff.

[damian]

Wouldn't the flow rate depend on the supply pressure?

As the water source is tanks I assume that a pump was involved.

Flow is a function of pressure differential and pipe friction. If you have small diameter pipes or very long runs flow rate will drop. That's why big irrigation systems use 3/4 feed pipes then 1/2 distribution pipes and those little ones at the end, 1/8 or whatever they are.

My block slopes steeply so I could irrigate the back bit with just gravity and get healthy flow out the end (drippers, sprinklers, whatever).