[Zone 6B] I fully anticipate having my balls busted but I am going to post this anyway. First, I don’t have irrigation. I do have 8 timers, hoses and sprinklers everywhere. But they honestly don’t water deep enough.
I present you my first prototype of my deep watering cart. A modified 3 wheel golf push cart, pvc pipe and garden spray nozzles.
Easy to push with one hand, I can cover ground quickly and it soaks the ground really well. I will be testing different nozzles.
Walking around with a normal hose sprayer takes too long and it doesn’t cover nearly as well.
I did search around for something like this but was unable to find anything, probably because this is crazy.
Ok, let me have it.
by UnlededFloyd
33 Comments
Honestly not a horrible idea, just curious if it really waters as deep as you think it does
Well, there is a reason heads put out water at a given rate and why we water over 15-20 mins per zone. Heads could certainly be made to put out at a higher rate, but that doesn’t work as well as soaking at a lower rate over a longer time.
Why not just water longer with sprinklers? This could make sense if there was a tank with a way to spread chemicals, but not sure why you would use this just to water?
Have you done the math here? Not sure how long that will take to put down a useful amount of water
Do you have a layout? How big is your yard?
I feel like for an extra few hundred bucks you coulda diy irrigation in a weekend and not worry about it again for 10 years.
How does this water deeper than just running an open full flowing hose? I have a couple spots that get dry because irrigation misses them so I just let me hose run for a few minutes.
Everyone else is providing the more constructive feedback so I’ll just say
I like golf
I like a green lawn
I like what you’ve made
This is a great idea for applying water soluble products if you could work a fertilizer injector into the design. It’s of course not increasing the gallons per minute of water that gets to the soil but it would be useful for reducing the mental stress of swinging a hose back and forth.
Be a nice feature of the robot lawn mowers dragging this around with a hose. Yarbo?
Now add a 10gal jug to it and a water pump and start pumping your chemicals so you don’t have to carry the 4gal backpack sprayer, now that id be interested in!
Have you looked at the sprinklers that “follow the hose”?
You pay out the hose in your desired path, snake it wherever you want, then turn it on, and the sprinkler rides it back to the source like a guide/track. Then you don’t have to worry about the spotty coverage as much, and I believe they have different speed settings on them to get a deeper/longer watering.
I don’t see how you’re going to get enough water down like that.
I use those impulse type sprinklers that go around in a circle to do large areas. I will run them in a circle for a few hours and then flip the little tab down and run them in half circles on the edges of the yard to get the corners. I set them up the night before and turn them on when I wake up. Usually in the middle of the night at like 4am.
And then I have a Dramm dial a pattern sprinkler to get all the smaller areas near the house or in the side yard.
It’s some jockeying of hoses but I can get a decent amount of water down that way at least.
I think my wife thinks I am crazy. She’s not wrong.
A tractor sprinkler would be much easier than walking that thing around manually https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-58322-Traveling-Sprinkler/dp/B000NJPUHG/
Maybe you could engineer a tractor sprinkler type device into your current build.
Ultimately, the amount of water you put down is going to be a function of time. I wouldn’t want to spend a bunch of my time walking a sprinkler cart around my yard but that’s just me.
Have you tried buying a hose timer? I got 2 Rachios for areas of my lawn that sprinklers can’t get to and it has been a game changer. Just Daisy chain some sprinkler head attachments and bob’s your uncle
Pretty funny idea. I’m sure it’s a better use than you golfing
There’s absolutely no way it’s getting enough water on a pass like you demonstrated. You’d have to make several passes or slow way down to make sure it’s getting a deep watering. With the money you spent on that contraption you coulda bought a couple cheap sprinkler heads and a used hose from OfferUp if your current set up isn’t getting all the coverage. But hey, it’s your time. Good luck to you. Btw, it’s fall now and it’s probably getting sufficiently water:heat ratio. I don’t know where you’re at geographically
“Have it”, like my money? Take it!
You don’t have irrigation but you have 8 timers, hoses and sprinklers everywhere?
If you feel it’s not watering deep enough, you either have a timing problem where you’re not running the sprinklers long enough, soil compaction problem or you’re watering at the wrong time of day.
I’m sure it was a fun project, and maybe it works for you, but it’s just not practical. Not all ideas should be followed through with. To borrow from shark tank, don’t put any more money into this.
I don’t think you understand what it means to water deeply. Unless you plan to take one step every minute or so, there’s no way this is going to put down enough water for it to be worth it. And even if you were to stand in one spot for a while, it still might not be long enough for the water to soak in..
Get one of those electric carts and you can just sit and control it!
I suppose you could lay out a couple tuna cans around the yard and when you pass over 1 you’ll see how much water you’re actually putting down
Do the Ole can test and go over it. You’re barely putting any water down like this.
For spraying chems seems smart not for watering
https://preview.redd.it/jsrsffl35bxf1.png?width=679&format=png&auto=webp&s=702e8eff22e23597eaf5ae0f65785fd4618b390e
i got 2 of these and can water .5 acre pretty effectively.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen
I just use one of those tractor sprinklers that follows the hose. Works super well, little effort, and deep watering
That would work if your walking 10000 steps a day. But your shoes will get muddy as hell
If AI is correct (because it was faster than me fumbling the calculator) you need to be applying 632 gallons to 1000 square feet to get 1” of water.
I think your device is only putting out a few gallons per minute if that. I will let you do the rest of the math.
I don’t think you understand how much water is really needed to soak a to lawn here.
Saw your comments about if you use your sprinklers you get some places saturated too much and some just a little wet. Why not swap out the sprinkler heads with the appropriate flow/distance heads. It feels like you’re solving the wrong problem with this.
You’re very close to making a pedestrian/walking boom sprayer for nutrition and pesticides. Love your thinking!
I have 3 rotating zones, 10000 sq feet total. So ~3300 for each zone. And all I have is 8.5gpm @45 psi. Each zone waters for 2 hours and 45 minutes starting at 5 am 🤣. But it’s enough water. Just gotta water. You’d laugh when i planted my first seed. I was rotating every zone for 30 minutes all. Day. Long. It was moist all day every day for like 3 weeks. But I got beautiful grass now. So apparently it worked