sprinklers and water bills

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yogurt_21

yogurt_21

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 5, 2009
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AZ, USA
So I have been topping off my pond quite often throughout the summer due to evaporation and I have also been watering twice a day to keep my backyard lawn nice.

I was thinking of making a switch to the sprinkler system and instead of coming off of my 3/4" waterline, plumbing it to a sump in my pond. This would seem t benefit in several ways the first being an auto w/c system for the pond, combine that with a reduction in water cost (if I do it right).

now an ideal final setup would be an auto w/c system from the indoor tanks to the pond and then the sprinkler system run off of the pond water and wither a timer based (ie right after the sprinklers are done) or a float switch based refill from the spicket.

now there are a few things I need to know which I dont the first being how much water my sprinklers take per cycle. pond is 4800g but I don't exactly want to be draining 20% of that twice a day lol. The sprinklers are 3/4" pvc based with 5 heads per loop and 3 loops total for the backyard. loop 1 is run 3 minutes, loop 2, 7 minutes and loop 3, 5 minutes.

now my liners are 20'by 25' so i could potentially expand the pond if I need to for just a little more labor (fish can go in their temp intex 800g pool for the transition)

I'm curious on your thoughts and more importantly if anyone has tried to run their sprinklers off of a pond before.
 
It would probably take one heck of a pump to do that. if you are talking a true sprinkler system. You would need to get somewhere around 90psi I think. About what city water runs at.

It is a doable idea, but would just take a lot of coordination. You would need a sprinkler timer and a few electronic gate valves. Then you would have to get the top-off equipment.
 
Are you on a well or city water?

The only problem I see would be adding enough de-chlor to the auto top system since a lot of volume be be turned over each day. I have been tring to think of a system for watering lawn/plants from my WC's.

I have been doing a lot of brainstorming for my next house with a basement. I will have the fish room by the sump pump ejector pit. Any WC's will be drained into the ejector pit, pumped outside to a holding tank that is burried underground. I have found some fiberglass holding tanks in the 7K-7500 gal. range. From their i can use a external pump, provided it has enough pressure, to water the landscape. I was also thinking, since it will rarely be used for the lawn, that a small submersible (mag 7 or so) will have enough guts to pump out water to different areas of the property. Soryy to hijack, will keep an eye on yor project.
 
no worries on the hijack I like any ideas you guys can post up as I'm in the brain storming area right now.

pharoah you're right about the pump which is why I'd be using a sump pump of 1/2hp or greater. it won't be on for very long so I'd hope the power usage wouldn't be too much.

as for gate valves those are already in place, in fact i have 4 gate vavles on a rainbird sprinkler system and I put it in so I know where the inlet is and could easily access it. so all of the plumbing for the sprinkler system is in place for 4 seperate zones, 3 are in use, the 4th is set for a future flower bed along the back wall.

the timing would be the interesting thing. obviously my current system has constant access to the flow but has it shut off except for when the auto sprinkler timers go off. This might present a problem with the sump as it is not like a city water system. which leaves a couple of options, one of which is using the sumps float switch and using a timer on the fill of the pond. (which i already have)

ie the timer would go off and start filling the pond once the pond reaches a certain level the sump float triggers the sump to turn on powering the spinkler line followed by the timer on the sprinklers themselves managing the switch between zones.



this would take either some observation for the first few times of it happening to balance out the timers or a lot of calculaton ahead of time to make sure that the pond doesn't overflow (the float switch will make sure it doesn't drain too much)

possible sumps
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-M...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-M...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

edit: haven't figured out dechlor yet but that would all depend on how much I would need to fill, which again i don't know how much the sprinklers take.
 
I like this idea a bit better.

1. Auto fill system for the indoor tanks. (Timer activated or constant drip method)
2. Overflows/float switch from the tanks/sumps going to the pond.
3. Float switch from pond to sprinkler system. ( possibly use a sump pump in an overflow pit similar to that of a basement. This would help you regulate the water level in the pond.)
 
interesting. I like it so I would opt more for the timer system as it's faster for me to setup than an ro/drip system where I would need to crawl in the attic.

so timer would turn on and start running new water into the tanks, then an overflow in the sumps would feed out to the pond then the pond would start filling up trigger the sump and then the timer on the sprinklers would go off.

now for the dechor I've found an interesting setup someone was using for their pond. http://www.ezflofertilizing.com/1-6.asp

so basically instead of fertilizer you fill it with dechlor.
 
yeah that would probablly be much cheaper then constanly buying dechlor. lol

now I need to figure out the odds and ends to it. my tanks are in different rooms throughout the house so it would either be running 2 water filter systems or a splitter from a single filter.

I'm thinking I'll put my salt build on hold then as this project would take up the funds set aside for that while offering savings in the long run (water bill, dechlor, time for w/c) and as cool as it would be to ahve asalt setup those savings are looking more appealing right now.

thanks for the suggestions and the link to your other thread, it helps to see one already in action.
 
BTW. I have changed this a bit. I have a "T" after the filter so that I can run water to two different setups. I was too cheap to buy a second valve. I just put a ball valve on one of the lines so that I could slow the flow and dedicate more water to the bigger of the two setups.

But FYI, the timer would allow you to have 4-6 electronic valves all set on different times if you want. But that would require separate filters in this case.
 
Yogurt - that system looks as though it would pay for itself in no time as opposd to buying de-clor. I few filter cartridge a year maybe.

Bobby - How often does the unit or carbon need to be changed?
 
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