Garden irrigation - my way to less work and greener grass

In the course of the insulation of our house, we dig it out completely in order to reseal the cellar as well. Since the irrigation pump is located in the basement and a large part of the garden has been dredged, we came up with the idea to also reestablish the irrigation of the garden.

The pump, a few valves, a little control, of course with openHAB, sprinkler etc. and the garden is always green. Very quickly we noticed that the idea was good, but the implementation was not so simple.

That is why I would like to tell you about our trip to the garden green in the next weeks. Currently, all components have been ordered, but have not yet arrived. I will put everything into operation step by step and report here.

I will try to describe all components as exactly as possible and for those who are interested, I will gladly name my sources of supply. Depending on the component you can save a lot of money.

So much for today. Happy gardening

Thomas

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You might find some use with Design Pattern: Cascading Timers combined with Design Pattern : Expire Binding based Countdown timer for the Rules.

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I’ll wait to read about your experience. I’m really in love with OpenHab from almost 6 years and all my house is managed by an OpenHabIan that controls everything. My experience seen some trouble using massive logic in rules (java cpu 100% after some time for example) and, in order to have better resilience, i’ve choose to use specialized systems for very specific (and well supported) task. About gardening I’m using a full software clone of OpenSprinkler that is SIP leaving OpenHab to get and report in the house dashboard the significant statuses using the mqtt integration.

well, I just realized a garden irrigation with RaspberryPi, openHAB2 and mariaDB.
It was quite easy and simple!
Solenoid valves and some sensors direct connected to Pi’s GPIO.
Few openHAB rules and a little bit of code to read sensors by deamons and write values to DB.
OK: there where some initial difficulties with openHAB2 coding. But not focused to this I’m really be thrilled how easy it was.

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After Step 1: General Decision, it is now time for Step 2: Create an irrigation and irrigation control plan.

We have identified three areas for us here:

  1. Things that are given and we don’t want to / cannot change
  2. Things concerning the control
  3. Things concerning irrigation

Given things
One of the main features is the possibility to control the irrigation with openHAB. This does not have to be exclusive, but start/stop, status and some basic settings should be possible. Furthermore we already have a driven well with a pump connected to it. The pump is in the basement and should stay there.

The control
After it was clear that the controller should be compatible with openHAB, we looked around a bit. The control system includes appropriate relays/switches, control logic, etc. We didn’t necessarily want to build that ourselves. Here we got hold of OpenSprinkler. openHAB Check: Yes there is a binding for it; Control Check: Yes there is. Either as an additional RaspberryPi board or as a complete solution. In addition, the power supply runs via a 24 AC transformer, which also supplies the valves and there is also the logic to control the pump with a suitable relay. We have decided to use the Raspberry version and we will add a housing which accommodates the transformer, the Raspberry and the pump relay too.

The irrigation
This is the most complex part (my wife did it :-)). Here you will find the appropriate information from the relevant manufacturers on how to plan the irrigation circuits, etc. - Use it!


The planning has resulted in a total of 6 irrigation circuits for the sprinklers, water sockets and drip irrigation. On the basis of the planning, the number of the individual parts required is determined. At the end we count 6 valves, 13 sprinklers, 2 water sockets, countless connectors and 250m of PE pipe.






Take a look around when ordering. The PE pipe must withstand the pressure of the water. Our pump can handle 3 bar. But the pipe for 6 bar was twice as expensive as the pipe for 16 bar. The connections are also much cheaper in the agricultural sector than at the irrigation specialists.

So much for planning. Step 3 is then the construction of the valves including connection to the pump and control.

So much for today. Happy gardening

Thomas

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Look forward to see how your project evolves. I started in a similar way but after looking at costs I’ve decided to use Sonoff 4CH PRO’s with Tasmota instead of OpenSprinkler.

One Sonoff channel is used with 220V AC to switch 24V transformer, and with PulseTime to cut power if OH is unavailable. Remainning Sonoff channels switch 24V DC among the electrovalves.

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Currently i am on vacation. Valves are in place and one water scket is working with the drip irrigation.

The case for all the electronic stuff has arrived, but i am still missing some minor stuff. ETA 21. August from China.

Hi please tell us (in particular me) about the connectors and the hose. I have the Gardena system as well and would like to not overpay in the future

As you can see from the above pictures, we bought the connectors from irritec and the pipes we use are PE Pipes for 16bar. Typically you only will need 6bar pipes, but the other ones are cheaper.

Gardena we only use for the water outlets and our dripping system, because the dripping system was the frist irrigation solution. But to be honest i would use another system that is more “professional”. Something that is used at a nursery.