Jumping back in

[Chad Gard]

On 2019-10-21 13:27, James Sentman wrote:

> You have 2" pipe that you're running for irrigation? That is serious irrigation! I've got 3/4" pipe in the ground here. I can see plenty of 2" irrigation valves on amazon for 80 to 100 bucks. If you only needed 1" then the price drops to 15 bucks, or under 20 for the better brands. If you're really irrigating a farm then you probably need that much flow, but if you can just run them a little longer then a couple of adaptors down from 2" to the 1" valve and then back to 2" would probably work and be drastically cheaper... You could try one and see if you still get enough flow or not, there may be some places you just can't get by with that, but any smaller area certainly would.

So, yeah...  The thing with mid-scale farming is everything is made for
large scale or small scale.  There are a ton of 3/4" options, and quite
a few 6" options, but the 2" world tends to leave you searching.  I
sometimes kinda wish I had put in 4" line, because, while expensive, the
local hardware store (you know, old school hardware.  I've got a tab,
and they sell nuts and bolts by the pound and such) carries a fair
selection of 4" fittings, but not much in 2".

But I do need the flow, as well as the ability not to loose too much
pressure. I initially put in 1 1/4" for a portion, and it really caused
problems. I'm actually a bit undersized as it is, but would need to
upgrade my well pump (which might happen down the line) to take
advantage of anything bigger than 2", and there's a big difference in
pipe cost when you're running 2500' of it.  So 2" it is. 

> After scrolling down the list a bit I see some 2" 24v solenoid values even in brass for $63 I see some 1 1/2" for around the same price. If I was faced with paying over a hundred bucks a valve I might decide that those areas that really needed the extra flow were worth the extra work to put 2 1" valves for $15 each in parallel.  There are also electric ball valve actuators that can be installed on a regular ball valve to control it. The only ones I see on Amazon are either ludicrously more expensive or look too cheap to be used reliably in the ground. There might be some other things you can find like that from other places though.

hrmmmm....  I'm still not seeing 2" 24v valves that aren't stupid
expensive, but I am seeing some inexpensive 2" 110v valves, which I
hadn't seen before.  That could be simple to deal with... 

> I have code for an arduino that has the ability to have a maximum timeout when running relays, so if you wanted to go that route then the possible stick on time would not be that big a deal.

I might take you up on that.  Realistically, of course, I've got a huge
time crunch on outdoor projects right now, and the ground will be frozen
soon, so the irrigation isn't going to happen until summer - if I have
the time and cash... 

Thanks!

-- 
Chad

-What's Cookin' at the Farm?  Recipes, menus, and more at
http://twie.holeinthewoodsfarm.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.machomeautomation.com/pipermail/xtensionlist/attachments/20191021/1dda705d/attachment.html>