or "all wet in Leesburg on a freezing day"
My greenhouse is 30 x 100 feet and I consider it to be a 'barely' commercial sized greenhouse. It sits on my property with my home. When I built it I ran water from my house into the greenhouse and was thankful that I was on a private well and did not need to worry about paying for water from the city.
As the greenhouse grew to its final size and filled with orchids I came to the understanding that I was spending 10 hours a week on watering chores by hose, so over the last two years I have been adding small self-watering zones which I can run for 1/2 an hour each. This strategy frees up my time, but the trade off is in water usage. Water is running on average about 4 hours a day.
When I ran the water line from the house to greenhouse I was smart enough to bring out hot water too. This allows me to mix in warm water so i don't shock the plants with ground water which is around 55 (not Celsius). However, I did not understand how pipe dimensions effect flow rate and I allowed the plumber to run 1/2 line into the greenhouse off the 3/4 line in the house. This limited my gallons per hour (gph) max flow to about 220 down from something closer to 375 gph. (Once you step down to 1/2 diameter line, screwing on a 3/4 inch hose in the greenhouse does not re-increase the flow rate.) So each zone in my greenhouse is limited to 222 gph. I have a lot of zones. I have calculated that if I run each zone for half an hour I soak each pot in the zone with the equivalent of 1/2 of rain and this seems to work. I arrange the plants/pot sizes in each zone so that they require watering at about the same time as the other plants/pot sizes in the same zone. Some zones get watered every day, like the Vandas. Some get watered two or three times a week, some only once....
At about 4 hours a day average, I am drawing about 900 gallons a day from my well, which fortunately has a very good refresh rate. I am throwing water in a spray pattern into zones and a lot gets wasted, but I am saving time since I don't have to spend 10 hours a week with a hose putting water into each pot that needs it. I haven't quite figured out how to make the drip irrigation idea work on a pot only basis with orchid bark/course potting material. It would be very nice to find a way to spray water only over the top of say a six inch pot so as it dripped through the pot, all the media received water. Drip systems tend to run straight threw and most of the potting media/root system remains dry. Then there is the problem of pots getting moved around by well meaning customers and drip emitters getting constantly knocked out of pots. The zone spray system avoids these problems. It rains in my greenhouse in small square foot areas I control.
Anyway, the submersible well pump of my house's well pushes water up into a pressurized holding tank. It comes up from 50 feet underground through a 1 inch line and goes into a small 20 gallon holding tank in my basement. This pump uses a "surge" of electricity to accomplish this task. Water is heavy and it has to be pushed UP a very long way but under normal circumstances it does not have to stay on long.
A 20 gallon tank gives you 4 gallons of water usage before the pump is switched on. If I understand correctly, most of this tank is a pressurized air bladder. When I flush a toilet or turn on the dishwasher water is pushed out of the tank through the 3/4 inch and 1/2 copper line that circulates to all the faucets in my house because of the pressurized air bladder in the holding tank. It is a very small tank but sufficient for a low use house hold. A 50 gallon tank would be better, but it is a 20 gallon tank.
This means, I get one flush and the pressure in the tank pushes 4 gallons of water into the toilet holding thank and this triggers the well pump to surge on and push 4 gallons back into the holding tank. Water, once in the pressurized holding tank, is pushed through the pipes passively; no electrical consumption.
The first thing I noticed over the last two years with my new zone watering system was that the well pump ran constantly and my electric bill went way high because it takes a lot of energy to move that much water up out of the ground but I got used to it.
However, the pump was never meant to run all the time. It was only a matter of time before it burned out. It was 45 years old and been run to death in the last 2 two to 5 years of it's life. It chose a coldest night in February to die. It gave me everything it had I didn't even know it was there, really.... Also, the holding tank pressure bladder wore out a long time ago, apparently. This means every time I got a glass of water for the last few years I had to rely on the well pump and the surge of electricity it takes to move 8 oz of water from 50 feet below ground through several thousand feet of pipe.
And the pump finally died and a well professional was called to explain all this to me. I have no choice but to replace the pump and the holding tank, but I am getting a more energy efficient pump and a larger 119 gallon holding tank. Without ever mentioning the electricity bill to the well professional he looked at all this information and said, "I'll bet you see a big drop in your electric bill with this new set-up." Anyway, "this new set up" is costing way more than I care to admit, but it was inevitable and I should have seen it coming.
The bottom lines here: I may have to go back to watering the old way; the
10 hours a week manual method. It uses much less water than the spray emitter zone system I installed over the last two years. I may do a little of both depending on which is cheaper at the moment, my time OR my electricity. One way or the other watering a commercial greenhouse turns out to be a major expense consideration. Even out of a private well, water is not free.Thank you for reading. I may post this to 25 different newsgroups over and over again with the subject
*^*^*^*^*Winches in T-shirts all wet in frigid Leesburg while British M15 agency secretly watches^*^*^*^*^*^" just to see how many ISP abuse desk clerks on the internet are still asleep.