Solar powered watering system for tree nursery

[Kubota Tee]

Had some questions about my solar watering system, so I thought I would start up a new thread here to share about my project.

Here's how it started . . .

We were living in Singapore at the time and looking for property back in western Michigan. My brother-in-law from west Michigan found a beautiful 3.5 acre lot on a newly dug lake (approx 35 acres) with an additional 11 acres of open space that would never be built on, but could be used by the 4 lot owners on our small cul-de-sac private road. The lake and our small development used to be a farm pasture, so it was basically void of any trees.

I could see the potential, but knew there would be a lot of work ahead in terms of landscaping - this is where the vision for getting a tractor started. We bought the property site unseen with only a handful of pictures from my father-in-law who also lives in the area and the recommendation of my brother-in-law. The transaction was finalized in February of 2006 and we immediately started the process of dreaming for the future development of the acreage.

The first idea was to develop a small tree nursery in the NE corner of the property which could support between 100 -150 trees. The idea was to purchase small trees (equals less $$$) and let them mature and be available when we were ready to use them in our future landscaping.

One small challenge was how to water these trees from the other side of the world. Remember, we were still living in Singapore and I didn't want to burden my wife's relatives with hauling buckets of water out of our lake each week to ensure the newly planted trees received the water they would need to survive until their roots got established. This is when I dreamed up the idea of building a solar watering station that would have a timer to control turning the pump on and off. I was planning a business trip back to the US in April and thought it would be the perfect time to stay an extra weekend and get the project off the ground.

 

[Kubota Tee]

As it turned out, my trip back to Western Michigan got delayed by 1 month which gave me some extra time to figure out all the details on the tree nursery and solar powered watering system. I owe a lot to the great people at Backwoods Solar who helped with everything from sizing the system to correcting my wiring schematic after I sent it to them for feedback. They are really great people and know a lot about the products they sell. Here are some pictures of my plans for the solar house and components as well as the wiring schematic.

 

[Kubota Tee]

I had ordered all the components for the solar house and had them delivered to my father-in-laws house in time for my weekend visit and with the help of Dad, I constructed the small "house" that was used to mount the solar panel and contain all the components. Here are the pictures of our build.

 

[Kubota Tee]

The next step was to actually get some trees planted and try out the new system. My father-in-law was a huge help in scouting out local deals on trees. I basically gave him a budget ahead of time and boy was I surprised on the amount of trees he was able to get. He is a closet landscape designer (retired physician actually) and knows much more about trees than I do so I was comfortable having him pick out a nice variety that we could use in future years of landscaping.

He ended up picking up a good variety of evergreens, flowering trees and shade trees that were all ready to be planted when I arrived. We had a great weekend of weather to kick things off and I was able to round up some local help to get the trees in the ground.

 

[Kubota Tee]

Well, it's been 3.5 years since the first trees went in the ground and the majority (95%) of them have survived and we have seen some nice growth. The solar house has recently been converted to a power station for our special 10' high Christmas Star that sits up in a tree over in the 11 acre open space. I used LED lights and wired up a special 12 volt plug that the timer controls. Looks real nice and all the lake neighbors like it too!

Our house is now built (phase 1) and the new tractor is being delivered in less than 1 week - can't wait!

It will be a busy spring with getting the landscaping started which will include moving about 50 - 75 of these trees.

Here's some pictures of the new house.

 

[ToadHill]

This might be a site that will be of interest to you.

www.freeplants.com/frame set.htm

 

[8934]

Thanks for sharing.

I like you solar powered watering system.. Mind sharing how much it cost?

Also how well does it work?

 

[Kubota Tee]

This might be a site that will be of interest to you.

www.freeplants.com/frame set.htm

Thanks for the link! Looks really interesting. My wife has more of a green thumb than I do - I'll pass it on to her.

 

[Kubota Tee]

Thanks for sharing.

I like you solar powered watering system.. Mind sharing how much it cost?

Also how well does it work?

Hello 8934,

Without digging into my files, here is what I remember regarding the costs:

Solar Panel ~ $500
Pump ~ $130
Battery ~ $100
Timer ~ $25
Charge Controler ~ $100
Various wire / connectors / etc ~ $25
Lumber / Building Materials ~ $50 (I used a lot of left over stock from other projects)

All in all, it was right around $1000. My comparison was based on having the electric company come out and bury the cable to a semi-permanent meter which would have required some sort of permanent structure to be build. Their quote was $1500 and then I would have had to buy a pump, timer, etc on top of that.

In terms of how well it worked, I couldn't be happier. My father-in-law introduced me to drip irrigation during this project and each tree got their own drip line (1/4") off of a main circuit branch line (1"). The drip heads we used were 1 gal per hour heads which made it easy to figure out how long the timer had to be on each day. The only thing that required a little extra work was the figuring out how to manage the intake line so that it would be kept off the bottom and not float up to the top. I ended up using a 5 gallon bucket filled with pea gravel as a weight/filtering mechanism. The pump has an additional filter on it as well, so that helped to keep all the drip heads from getting clogged.

Hope this helps,

 

[linearxs]

Those trees were pretty big. Why would you have to water them? I realize it probably made them grow faster but do you think it helped the survival rate?