Water Your Garden (or Anything) for Free

Hi Everyone! A while ago we started our garden, and since we have a creek in our backyard it was always in my head that I wanted to somehow get the water from the creek into the garden. Well after a few months of planning and my fair share of mishaps, we finally have water in the garden! So today I'm going to be sharing everything I learned in the process and how I got to the final product.

Water test kit (I used this one)

Pvc (hardware store)

Assorted Pvc Fittings (hardware store)

Water Pumps (I used these)

Low Pressure Sprinkler Heads (hardware store)

Before you start working on this make sure to test your rivers water to make sure it is safe for watering your plants with. The test kit I linked is the one I used and It worked great for me and was also easy to use.

The first thing you need to figure out is the head pressure that your pump will be under. The max head pressure for the pumps I linked is 15m (50ft), for most people 1 of these would work. I used 2 because I plan on having 4 sprinklers and my head pressure totaled about 45ft. Keep in mind though that more head pressure = lower flow rate, so less Liters per minute.

For calculating Head pressure:

Every vertical foot up = 1ft of head pressure

Every 10ft of Horizontal travel = 1ft of head pressure

Every elbow (90 degree) connector = 1ft of head pressure

(Sprinklers also add pressure but this depends on the sprinkler)

Using these you can calculate the total amount of pressure in feet or meters. If it is close to 15m (or 50ft) I would recommend getting 2 of the pumps linked, If you are using other pumps I cant tell you without knowing their head pressure rating (If you have Questions Please ask them in the comments and I will help you)

I live in Florida, and if you've ever been here you know it rains, a lot. When it rains, the water in my creek tends to rise by a few feet (3 or 4 on average, but once went up about 8.5ft !) and during heavy rain there are extremely strong water currents, like knock down a tree strong. So I decided to completely over-engineer my protection solution.

This Picture was taken while I was working on this, afterwards both sides were filled with concrete and the piping was cut to the proper length so that the pump and filter would sit in-between the cinder blocks.

You may not even need any protection depending on your situation, but I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. For mine, I used

4 cinder block

4 pieces of 4ft steel rebar

~3 bags of Sakrete concrete (the just add water one)

2 Bags of marble chips (any rocks would work, these were just the cheapest)

Big Hammer (not sure of the technical term but any one with a large head works)

To install this I first found the area with the lowest current to minimize wear and tear, and also to try to prevent too many leaves getting into it.. Then I set down my 4 cinder blocks, 2 on each side stacked 2 high. I then Hammered the rebar into the ground through the cinder blocks. The bed of our creek is hard clay and limestone, thought it would be pretty easy to hammer in the rebar, it was not. After spending a lot more time than I thought putting in the rebar I was ready for the concrete. This was actually fairly easy after I realized the best way to do it is to pour the dry powder into the cinder blocks (there was water in them because part of them were below the water line of the creek) and mix it with my hand. Although this tactic worked great, I would recommend wearing some cheap gloves you can get in a 10 pack from a hardware store because I cut my hand on one of the rocks or something in the mix. That stung........

The pumps I use can run off of up to 24v so that's what I run them at. I do this to get the most power out of them. They use BLDC motors instead of standard brushed electric motors which makes them very efficient and small.

For a power supply I used a 24v 360w power supply from amazon. I found it worked very well for me, but you probably don't need that much power as the pumps only draw around 90w each.

For the actual wiring I used 14awg for the pump close to the garden (25ft) and I used 10/12 awg for the run to the pump in the creek (200ft). If you need short runs of cable you can get it at a hardware store. I already had the 25ft run and I bought the 200ft run on ebay, but you can measure and figure out what works best for you. Just make sure to use wire that can handle the current going through it.

(For the installation of the guard to protect the stuff in the creek, go to the Planning for Precipitation step.)

For most applications you could just dig a trench yourself but with the length of the trench I need, I decided to rent a small trencher form the Home Depot Rental center. It worked great and dug the trench in like 20min, it is really good workout though, it was very hard to pull.

I also got a small sprinkler access point to protect the pump near the garden. It works great and I'm really happy with how it looks and how easy it makes it to check on the pump or fix something.

To stop leaves clogging the pump or getting stuck in the pipes and such I made a simple pvc filter. The pump I linked fits perfectly in a 4in piece of pvc, so I drilled a bunch of tiny holes in it and cut a slot in the side for the pumps power wire. I also drilled a hole in the cap for the 1/2in pvc to go through so the pump can be fully enclosed.

(For sprinklers I tried to design my own but they ended up being worse than the ones you can buy at Home Depot so I'm not including the file, but if you find a better design or design one, please post it in the comments, I would love to see it!)

Most of us would want our sprinklers to come on at a certain time each day like our normal sprinkler system. I originally wanted to use relays and Arduino's to control the pumps but I realized even supplying the code, most people would have some difficulty especially if they never had any experience with coding or electronics. I then realized there was a simple solution: A Christmas light timer, they are readily available, like this one here, and you can set it to go off 8hrs after sundown which would be early in the morning. There are more sophisticated ones but this should do the job fine.

All in all I think I spent around $200 on my system, but if you do it right, I could definitely see this happening for under $100. If you have any questions or need any help, please ask in the comments and I will try to answer your question or solve your problem.

-Happy Making, Barrett T.