How about a Clarke PW2 2inch Petrol Driven Water Pump - £200 from Machine Mart. Pumps 400L per minute (probably half that in real life). Add a few 1000 Litre IBC containers (£20 each on ebay - 280679272487), and some jerry-rigged piping, and you've got ample water where you need it.
Councils work for you. Don't let them forget this.
Poll your local councillors, by letter, phone & surgery. Councillor Goode is a fan of allotments and will be genuinely aghast to discover this change. Encourage them, and invite them to visit.
Alderman Mucknbrass thinks that you should all be buying your mouldy veg from his greengrocer's shop anyway and regards allotments disdainfully as no more than botany on the rates.
Now you need a local newspaper to run the story. Old folks kicked off allotments? They'll lap it up. Especially when you lead them straight to Mucknbrass' quotes. Most importantly, you have to finish the piece with Cllr. Goode's upbeat support. Don't back a council into a corner, you're trying to steer them, not make them turn on you. Give them an option and a place to go next, especially when they can get to look good after all this (no matter how little deserved - that's political horsetrading for you).
What do I know about councils? Well I've just run the Waltz on the Wye steampunk festival, with splendid support from Chepstow council (and credit where due, pretty much all of Chepstow). This week I'll turn my attention to home and see why the Rogiet Community(sic) Council is instead trying to fell every tree in the village.
The local press want to cover more Steampunk events (we make for great photos). Maybe I'll give them one, as a tree-hugging picnic where we can say goodbye to the trees before Rogiet Community Council fells them.
Practical aspects:
Sounds like you need to store irrigation water above ground, and have some minimal system for gravity distribution of it.
Storing water isn't banned, although there may be requirements for how you do so. Open water isn't a good idea (mosquitoes), and keeping it dark will help with the algae too. Recycled IBCs are your friend, so keep a look at farm plant auctions, as well as the regular dealers. You'll need someone with a decent sized van on board for shifting the components.
Raising it above ground can mean anything from nailed together pallets to a whole timber-framed viewing deck and hiding the water tanks in the structure (BTDT). Pumping into this needs to be manual (as a backup, if nothing else), but solar and electric is worth doing too. Panels are cheap now (try Maplin for bargains), a car battery or two and a timer so that it pumps in bursts, using a stripped cordless drill and a ten quid pump from Machine Mart. The great thing about solar irrigation is that you only really need it when the sun has been out recently, solving your biggest problem.
Those pumps are a bit of a pain for that sort of thing - heavy, as are the pipes, and priming requires more effort than you want for a little bit of water.
Nobody (least of all the OP) commented on my idea of connecting a hose from the Council-installed handpump to the allotment. Of course we haven't seen the precise scenario, but this would seem to me to be easiest, by far
John
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Nightjar saying something like:
dave presented the following explanation :
Could the hand pumps be replaced with some diy wind operated pumps, then pipe the output around to where needed?
In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes
I suppose the obvious response is to not use Heavy Water as it is injurious to health and is about 11% more dense than ordinary water :o)
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