Help me make an automatic watering system!

[About400and20]

Ok so thank you for taking some time to help me out once again!

So the grow is going great for now, I just finished making a carbon scrubber, and today i started making an automatic watering system, here's what i got:

• A digital timer - at least 1 minute of operation
• A small submersible water pump for aquariums
• A big 15L bucket
• Gardening hose

The problem is, if i let the water pump work for 1 minute, it would pump LOTS of liters, i only need 0.5L per watering.

One thing i thought was placing a smaller 0.3-0.4L container on a platform on the big bucket. It will have a very small opening with a small pipe leading towards the pot, the pump will work for 1 minute - it will fill the small container in 10 seconds or so, and then it will just overflow into the bucket again. Some water will go into the pot while this is happening, and then the water pump stops, it will jump empty itself in the pot. So i will get around 0.5L. This sounds like it works but its not very reliable.

I also thought about placing a valve on the hose so the water has resistance, therefore lessening the flow (but wouldn't this damage the water pump?)

Please give me your thoughts into this one, i'll have to leave home in a few days and I need to come up with a working system soon!

Thanks for your time.

 

[go4snypr]

what are you watering?? dirt? rockwool? sunshine mix? coco? If your using dirt or sunshine mix, you can;t be watering every day either way, it would have to be every couple of days or your plant will never get the nice wet/dry cycle it likes and you will over water it. If it is rockwool, water all you want, it will dry out and is hard to over water as it is designed to hold oxygen.. If it is coco, you will need to water more often i believe.....

 

[About400and20]

It is a single plant in soil. The timer is digital so i can set a schedule. I am probably going to set it at once every 3 days. Which is also my current schedule. I switched the plant to 12/12 one week ago, and have put a nutrient tab in the soil for flowering. And the growbox is now warmer than usual so it could lose more water than usually.

 

[go4snypr]

put the pot in a tray (a dish that is designed to be under a plant pot), and "bottom feed" the plant. then put the tray and pot into a larger container that will hold the spillage once the tray gets full. Example, go buy a large tote (25 gallon), place a small stand in the tote and put the tray and pot on the stand, let the tray fill with water and let your timer continue to run for its minuite it will over flow the tray and pour over into your tote. what is left in the tray will just be soaked up by the plant as the dirt dries, then set your timer to run every 3 days. but no matter how you do it, it is the same gamble, you may over or under water in any case. Just make sure the stand is higher than the water level will get in the tote before you get home.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Go to a gardening center. You can buy a complete watering system kit. Mine is 1/4 inch line with a ton of fittings, elbows,tees, various sprinklers, drip emitters, flow control valves, all sorts of stuff. There's a manifold which connects to the garden hose and has X number of connections for the 1/4" line. I've never set it up yet - I'll just need the time to fine tune it when I do to make sure each line is watering at the rate I want. I was given the kit- I don't think they're expensive.