Ooh. You may want to add broken pipe detection so you don't flood the neighbors. Maybe a flow and / or pressure sensor. Possibly a current sensor on a pump.
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Haha! Sorry, I must add that it was intentional. I'm only using 1 of the 2 outlets on the manifold, so I opened the spare to see what the pressure was like. I could easily run some soak hoses or something.
My mother-in-law has just been to the plot and mentioned that about half the water butt is empty. So very roughly this means:-
Over 2 days the system has used approx. 125litres from the 250litre butt.
Which means its using about 62.5litres a day, 31.25litres in the morning and then again in the evening.
There are around 13 plants (tomatoes, cucumber & courgettes) being watered in the polytunnel. 62.5/13 = 4.8litres a day for each plant (roughly) (2.4litres in the AM and again in the PM)
I could be more accurate and stick a dripper in a bottle to measure the quantity of water, but I don't think there is any need to.
Quite happy with the results.
[EDIT]
I mentioned the above to the MOL and she just responded with, the plants look ok so that'll do.
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in summer, you roughly need 2L of water every 48h for tomatoes (if you are in a very sunny place. every 3 or 4 days otherwise)... 4.8litres a day is a huge waste and you need to water only in the early morning...
I guess it'll depend on the size of the plants?
Either way, it's working and doing what I want it to do. I'd say that's a result. Sure, next thing would be work out exactly how much water is needed etc but I'm not too worried about that right now. I just know I don't need to go the plot every day to water the poly.
I could drop the afternoon session and see how it gets on.
if you care about the outcome (production, quality, quantity) and saving water - a rare resource those days - may be you should read about watering plants and their needs and not just focus on not having to do the job any more 
The idea of the watering was to free up time to do other things, which it has done. I think understanding the plantes needs and dialing in the watering is a great idea.
as is time
fair point, but if you are going to kill the plants or hinder production, you would save time, money, energy and water by not watering them at all
I'm not a plant expert and I'm not going to pretend to be, this is our first year with the plot. There was a time issue and it was solved, the rest can be tuned in as needed. Plus, it was fun and that's the best bit for me. If someone wants it to water less it can be done, water more, it can be done, check the weather, disco ball inside the shed if that makes the kids happy while we're down there.
Agreed
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There are improvements to the system in the works, including monitoring a poly tunnel temp & humidity and controling the environment using vent fans & misting. This time growing chillis.
This is also just a post to keep the thread open.
More coming soon.
So a bit of an update.
In addition to the above system I built last year, I've moved over to an esp32, and included a SHT20 temperature and humidity sensor and 3x 120mm pc fans.
The idea is the SHT20 keeps an eye on the Temp & Humidity and triggers one of the fans as an intake fan to cool things down. The other 2 fans are used as air circulation. Both sets of fans are controlled by individual PWM and powered directly from the 12v battery via a relay.
I've built a little voltage divider with changeable resistors to get the voltage down to 3.3v (its a little less but will account for it in the code) to measure the PV voltage.
All the data will eventually be sent to a website hosted on a RPi Zero 2W, which will be accessible externally. I've trailed the website and its working fine. Just need to get the database set up.
I'm trailing this all in my mini greenhouse full of chillis before taking it to the allotment.
I'll post the updated code once I've got it all up and running.
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Built a little box in the back of the garden to mount the small 10W pannel and hide the enclosure.
Its hooked up to charge the battery only right now. Will connect the fans in a day or so once I'm back from a work trip.
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This is an awesome project and exactly the kind of thing I was looking to get inspiration from as we've also recently acquired an allotment and I was think of automating some of the basic watering tasks
What size hoses are you using to fan out the watering on a per plant level?
Looks like you have standard size garden hose running in and out of the VerRich 12V water pump but I wondered if putting T junctions into this at the start of every bed, and then running a smaller hose down the bed at 90o with holes in it would be the most effective way to actually get the water to the plants
One of the other things I thought about was buying one of those water irrigation setups you can get from eBay / wherever which contain little jets and is meant to be run from a garden hose, but using your kind of setup instead
This kind of thing...
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Is there a nightwatchman there? No concerns for vandalism or somebody stealing all that equipment?
Hey, thanks! I hope it's of some use to you one way or the other.
Yes, it's a hose which then goes into one of thos manifolds like in the picture you posted (the orange Y splitter). Then the 4mm irrigation hose is on the end of that. The 4mm hose then runs from plant pot to plant pot with drippers on. The system terminates with misters which water the chilli plants.
I've set the drippers so over a 10min period they put out around 2 litres, this happens in the monring around 7am.
I'll post a video of it all in action later on.
No. If it gets nicked then it gets nicked. Nothing I can do about it. I just have to hope no is after a DIY irrigation system. It's pitch black on the plot at night and in the day it's busy right though until sunset.
The 2nd version with the solar pannel mounted on the wooden box is in the corner of my garden providing air circulation to my other chilli plants in the small poly/greenhouse. It's gets hot in there fast so need to keep the air moving and temp below 30 C, which it quite easily gets to even in this northern British weather.
I'll post the code for the V2 at some point.
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Hi, great post - looking forward to your v2 version as well.
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