On Mon, 09 May 2016 18:26:42 +0100, MM wrote:

snip

Stop Press!!!

The heating engineer was here today to service the boiler. He's the
same chap who replaced my leaky single-skin oil tank with a bunded one
last October. So we got talking and I pointed to the water butt and
pipes. First thing he said was, the 4mm pipe is offering too much
friction for the very small volume of water flowing through it.

Hmmm, I could imagine that the case if you were looking for a good
flow as that requires 'volume' but for a dripper role? I bet if you
had just left one open ended 4mm pipe on the floor with the time on
'On' it would empty the butt before you thought. Even a small leak
will spread water all over the place pretty quickly.

His
suggestion was: Get a piece of standard 13mm garden hose, put a
bog-standard push/click connector on one end and connect it to the
Hozelock. Then drill very small holes along the hose in the right
places. Oh, and block off the end of the hose after the last plant.

So more like a 'leaky hose' solution or the std Hoselock
'distribution' size hose for a std water distribution system (that you
pierce and fit the thinner hose that go to each pot).

I did it and it works perfectly! I had to have two goes, though. The
first time I drilled the holes with a 3mm drill, but the water
consumption would have been quite high over two weeks, so I did it
again, this time with a 1mm drill. All six plants are getting a nice
watering for 2 minutes every 6 hours.

Which sounds very close to the idea of P2 and just taking the drippers
off your initial system. ;-)

I topped up the water butt to
the brim and that's going to be it for now. The hose sits nicely
across the top of the pots, but I stuck short lengths of bamboo cane
down the side of the hose at each pot, just to ensure the hose stays
in place. That is, imagine a tuning fork placed over the hose pipe and
then stuck into the compost. I formed "tuning forks" out of two pieces
of cane.

As long as you ended up with something that works, that's the main
thing.

Now relax and enjoy yer hols. ;-)

Cheers, T i m