Water is a very precious asset that must be learned to conserve. One of the activities where water is used the most on a daily basis is gardening and agriculture. If you are one of those who have a garden with demanding plants in terms of irrigation or an urban garden, it is best to learn about it watering with bottles. Water is essential for our irrigation systems and its use can be optimized using this technique.
Therefore, we are going to dedicate this article to tell you all the characteristics and advantages of bottle irrigation.
Irrigation system with bottles
Although there are numerous types of irrigation that are quite efficient today, if we have a too demanding demand, we can use the bottle irrigation system, which is much cheaper. It is also known by the name of solar drip irrigation system and it comes to change the whole picture as it offers an efficient, simple and economical irrigation system. Installation is quite fast and can help thousands of farmers around the world. Its installation is simple and You can improve the optimization of water use to reduce the consumption of this precious commodity.
It is an irrigation technique designed to achieve a more optimal use of water. Thanks to this irrigation with bottles, the energy of the sun can be used as the engine of the distillation process. It is a system that is surprising thanks to its simplicity and efficiency. The amount of irrigation water can be reduced by up to 10 times compared to traditional irrigation systems.
Keep in mind that you have to use bottles, so it also helps us to reuse said plastic waste. The bottle irrigation system can be quite optimal since it also serves in the field of transforming salt water into fresh water. And is that since the water is made, the salt manages to separate from it and the water becomes fresh water.
Advantages of bottle irrigation
Manufacturing is quite simple and is available to anyone. It is possible to install this watering system with bottles both in the professional field and in the home. One of the main advantages is that it requires little maintenance. Just it is necessary to replenish the water in the reservoir when necessary. It is also important to uproot plants that grow indoors. And is that the conditions inside the water bottle are ideal for some species of plants.
With the application of this technique, plants can be fully developed by simply using the amount of water they need and preventing all the unused water from evaporating. By requiring materials that are usually waste that are used bottles of either water or soda, manufacturing and abstraction are very simple and cheap. It can be very easily used in poor countries with long dry seasons. Thanks to the optimal use of the water resource, the performance of agriculture can be improved by reducing the cost of water.
This type of irrigation also can be used in desert areas who have some access to a source of fresh or salt water. Some of these areas are near the sea.
How to make
Let's see what are the steps to make a bottle irrigation system. It is only necessary to have two PET plastic bottles since they are more resistant. They need to keep their original caps. Ideally, one bottle should be larger than the other. For example, we can place a large bottle of 5 liters and another of 2 liters. Glass or crystal bottles with the same characteristics can also be used. Keep in mind that for this it is important to have an efficient method to cut them in half.
The large bottle should be cut to remove the base while the small one should be cut in half. Only the bottom is useful. The base of the small bottle must be placed on the ground filled with water. The large bottle is placed on top of it to serve as a dome. The relative position between the two has to allow us that, when opening the lid of the large bottle, we can pour the water on the little one. Therefore, they must be aligned between the plugs. Both bottles are thus arranged and form what we have called bottle irrigation.
You just have to place the bottles. The plant to be watered. It is important to put some straw or dry leaves around the plant.
Operation
Let's see how bottle irrigation works to see how efficient it is. It is necessary to know the ways in which water can be used when it evaporates. When we water in a conventional way we know that part of this water is taken by the plant through the soil and its roots. However, the rest of the water that is not used at that time ends up evaporating.
It is also necessary to consider that the other part of the water is filtered through the subsoil towards the deeper layers of earth. Once they reach the groundwater flows they cannot be useful for cultivation. The degree of transpiration of the plant and the evaporation of the soil depend on the degree of relative humidity of the air and its temperature. The operation of irrigation with bottles is very similar to that of solar stills. You just have to use the heat of the sun to evaporate the water that will remain on the walls of the large bottle.
When the sun's rays fall on the bottle irrigation system, a greenhouse effect is produced inside. The air temperature rises and the water is caused to evaporate. There, based on the humidity inside the hood, drops are formed on the wall that fall to water little by little.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about bottle irrigation and its characteristics.