Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design 1 May 10, 2010 7:40 pm As the heading says. we just had our water pressure tested today and it's very low. We need to consider getting a plumber out to test from the mains point. Our ******* bro's guy several weeks ago tested from there but from what we were told today unless he was a plumber he shouldn't have done this. ( totally illegal) Anyway. The retic guy who came out today had a proper pressure gauge thing. He just tested the pressure from our first tap as he said he could lose his water wise accred if he did the test from the mains point and that a plumber is the only person allowed to touch that mains point. There is also the possibility that because of rock it might be pretty much impossible to get a retic pipe to the mains point with any ease so teh first tap might be our retic starting point anyway. Our pressure test came in at 4Lpm at 150kpa. (That's about half what we really need from my vague understanding) Retic guys said it't Too low for any popup type sprinklers at all. Very disappointed as I was hoping to have popups for the lawn. A subsurface systems would be possible but more than our budget $ can take. I can still have a drip system or poss drippers ( no thanks) for the garden beds. He suggested we could try and get a plumber out to test from the mains point as it was possible there would be better results. ( From what Dh said he didn't sound hopeful) So I am trying to decide if it's worth getting a plumber out to do a full pressure type test from the mains point.. to test LPM@ 300kpa 250 kpa 150 kpa using a graduated bucket etc etc/ DH just looked at the water corps web site and found something about guaranteed 20 L pm water pressure to all households. But that's prob for Perth suburbs not out here. Is it worth ringing our local water authority? We are "at the end of the line" here and on a slight rise. Will it get worse when anyone builds around us? It seems the other solution is to put in a storage tank and a pump system??? but that's lots of $'s as well. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 2May 12, 2010 7:19 am Just a quick update. I called into to the retic place yesterday. The pressure is too low for ANY pop up type sprinkler to work unless I wanted every popup on it's own station. oops. and then it might just popup but no water would liley come out. oh dear. I can use drip or subsurface as these need less pressure. So this si what I am currently considering for garden beds. But sub surface is too expensive for lawns and beds so at this stage it looks like an old fashioned sprinkler for lawn. I emailed off to the Water Corporation hoping I might get a reply by the end of the week. I gave them my town and full name but no other contact details. Now here is where it gets interesting. DH got a phone call on his mobile yesterday from the Water Corporation! ( he never gives out his mobile if he can help it) They were trying to find me and asked if it might be our place that had the water pressure problem. How incredible is that. I can only think that last year when we had problems with our water not coming back on after some pipe work was done in the town that Dh must have given them his mobile number. They've looked up my surname on their water rates records for our town and someone last year must have added his mobile number as a contact number. Otherwise we have no idea how they would have gotten his number. ] Anyway it seems they really aren't happy that the water pressure might be below their "almost" guaranteed pressure of 20L pm. So someone will be set out within the next few days to test the water from the mains. Things MIGHT improve. Cross your fingers for me. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 3May 12, 2010 1:16 pm I'm not sure what Mr Fu's thoughts are on drip systems in the garden, but I actually quite like the idea. DP had a waterwise native garden on auto reticulation in his bachelor pad (pity he couldn't bring it with him when he moved in with me!). The lawn on the verge were pop ups, but the rest of the gardens were drippers. I liked that you could place the dripper near the base of the plant and just leave it to get soaked, instead of water mist floating away with the breeze. I hope the water corp can sort out your pressure problem, and that you don't have to change your landscaping plans! Oceanic with Nautilus upgrades. Handover 8 September 2010 Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 5May 12, 2010 8:05 pm Keen Unfortunately the tap is fully on. We will just have to wait and see what they say. Oceanus2 yes drippers would be good for my rose garden area and the dipper hose stuff would be great for the other large mostly waterwise native/hardy plant beds. But doing subsurface irrigation for the lawn is not within our means. So it will have to be garden sprinkler if the water pressure can't be improved. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 6Jun 16, 2010 11:52 pm I can't believe this! It can't be right! I would love to suss it out next time I'm down there. Let me know what the water mob find. Must take ages to fill the kettle just for a cuppa Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 7Jun 17, 2010 12:41 am The water corp hunted us down within 2 days and came out. sadly Fu that was correct and the water corp said that level of pressure is fine. If we want to have retic we'll have to have a rainwater tank and a pump. guys who discovered our low pressure had checked out some close by gardens and commented that one that looked like it was using bore obviously had a salt problem and the closest neighbours have a couple of huge tanks and we assume a pump system. ( i know at least one of their tanks is filled from their bore as it's for their pool) the blokes were pretty good about the results. said they suggested we get one of the local tank guys to get some prices etc.. While they are happy to do the job for us they said we'd be better off getting the closest local mob to do it. The guy laughed about the "landscape/retic bloke who came out before and said they'd love to know how he expected it all to work with our pressure. he said they've seen it before. people come in and lay the retic then find the pressure isn't there. Not so great after someone has paid out lots of dollars for something that is useless. ATM we are waiiting for our fences to go up before the lawn gets done. Hopefully that's happening this week after about 5 weeks delay. then we'll have to decide if we are going the water tank+ pump to retic route or just using a sprinkler. You are most welcome to call in next time you are down this way. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 8Jun 17, 2010 1:06 pm This is kind of exciting though. You can come up with an increadible garden that is not going to require any irrigation It will look amazing as well I'll get into my network of peeps and find some good contacts. Browse the stuff at Zanthorreas web site. There is a good mob in Busso that does this stuff and sells the plants. Your garden can be an absolute picture Visit Kings Park next time you venture into dullsville and I'll get back to you. Men of the trees website, wildflower society website too Muchea website also has some good info and maybe have a squiz at the Lullfitz website. Get the book http://www.lullfitz.com.au/orders.php and browse these from the wildflower society. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~wildflowers/Ebooks.html Instead of a lawn look at using a range of WA plants and the two best I can suggest in Grevillea Gin Gin Gem and Kennedia microphyla. Get them in tubes and away you go. It would work out cheaper than lawn and I think look better Just mow it every few months Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 9Jun 17, 2010 1:07 pm A good consultant on this is the team at Inspired By Nature. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 10Jun 17, 2010 8:09 pm hi Fu DH wants a small area of lawn. so we'll still be getting some EZ if the damn fencers ever arrive. They were semi expected today. sigh. hopefully they'll be here tomorrow. I've collected a few plant samples <natives> in tube stock already and am planning on a few more visits to the bunbury/eaton group of the native growers for more tube stock. a few grevilleas and assorted other natives for ground covers with some feature native plants in the garden bed and a few non natives that will be able to manage with the same watering /non watering requirements once established. of course they will have to be happy under my deciduous trees. Since 2 are already planted and there are 4 more to be planted in the garden beds. Always had ambitions to have a retic system though. Still might get some drip surface retic going for teh garden beds yet. I am really torn about the retic for the lawn. I know it's best to get it in before the lawn is laid but am unsure yet whether to get lawn retic or not given that it means outlay for water tanks and a pump as well. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 11Jun 18, 2010 1:05 am Get the lawn in and hand water it where you can. I make some sprinklers that are water wise and a wonderful job for watering big areas. Throws water like rain drops Not much misting and not too bad on low pressure Click 'em on ya hose You get get subsurface down after. The hassle with tanks is that the SW has all it's rain in winter. You won't need it then. In summer that will last two or three waterings at best. Then you either have to buy the water to fill the tanks or wait months for it to rain. We went 5 months this year gone Get a bore. No I'm not available I mean a bore for the water . Can you share with next door. If he says no, wait till he goes on holidays and rig up your system to it Umm-marr You really would be amazed at how nice a lawn gin gin gem makes and then it flowers and the lawn looks like it is on fire! amazing Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 12Jun 19, 2010 1:28 pm Wow Kex that is low low pressure, I would try going a bit further with the water corp, even higher than you went, letter to the minister even, in my experience the local Water Corp Guys are not that interested and the easy answer is what you got, the hard answer is fix the F@#$ing thing, then they actually have to do something, I easily run 4 pop-ups on each station even in summer when the pressure is lower whilst everyone else is watering, when I was in Morawa, population 150 and water came from 80km's away I had similar retic set up with as many as 5 pop-ups, I would suggest that your towns pressure is un acceptable, talk with silvercloud in the weather forum and see how she gets on WA's Best Weather Site (well I think so) Going 10 years plus (Click Here) My Aquaponic Project I'm Not an Alcoholic! I'm a Drunk, Alcoholics go to Meetings Cheers, Nocky (Paul) Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 13Jun 20, 2010 6:12 pm Grevillea Gin Gin Gem <-- have picked up one atm to test it out as a ground cover. I'm not 100% excited by the flowers. But do plan to use ground coveres quite a bit for the garden bed areas anyway. Kennedia microphyla- also a possibility for the verge areas though I think the rabbits would like it too much. still tempted to do the paper daises out there but wondering how many will survive the rabbit onslaught. DH spotted a rabbit family ( 2 large 2 small) last night.They hopped 3/4 of the way across the road and he said seemed to be considering our fence. ( which at this stage is not rabbit proof at all) he reckoned they were a family as the littler bunnies seemed to be running amock going everywhere uncontrolled. The bigger bunnies seemed to be having a con flab about which way to go. Eventually they opted for their regular side trip into the plum farm behind us. I think they are just waiting for us to plant hoping we'll think we have a rabbit proof fence. ha! we know it's not. YET. wait 'til the 2nd wire layer goes on. hahahah! that'll slow em down. Re: Help!Water pressure is VERY low-4L per min.bye bye retic 14Jun 20, 2010 11:56 pm with the rabbits having a chomp, you won't have to mow it. If you can calculate the reasonable charged head from let's say 100mm below the gutter to the top of where the vertical riser's horizontal discharge pipe will be, that… 11 17516 First time building 2 storey home, is under construction (in Framing stage) in NSW. I have 3 toilets and need bidet spray in… 0 16836 |