If you plan on abandoning your house for 2 months in a row, I recommend
that you check your insurance policy, especially if you are in an area
subject to freezing. In my area insurance policies require empty houses to
be checked once every 48 hours for possible water leaks, break-ins and loss
of heat in winter, if they are going to be empty for a week or more. If you
cannot provide evidence that this was done and a problem occurred, they may
not cover the damages that happen.

It may be simpler to arrange for a house-sitter to visit the house on a
regular basis and water the plants at the same time, even if you have to pay
something for the service.


"uncle k" wrote in message
nk.net...
Note: Someone in an RV group recommended that I post this here,
complementing your NG for having many great ideas.

We travel pretty regularly in our RV, and have recently bought a winter
home
in AZ. When we're away for up to two months, our house plants (in WA)
somehow survive, with a good soaking when we leave, along with placing
them
so they'll get enough light, but not burn up. They're awfully thirsty by
the time we come home.

Now that we expect to be gone for longer periods, we need some kind of
automatic, indoor watering system. We need to shut off our house water
while we're gone, to avoid potential disaster, since our house is somewhat
remote. In other words, whatever we get will need to be battery operated
(winter power outages are common) and draw water from
buckets/tank/whatever.
So far, what I've found doesn't have enough capacity to do the job. We
simply have
too many plants, which will suck up a lot of water in three to five
months.
It's not practical to have someone go to our house, nor do we want to
impose
that on anyone, especially when they wouldn't have water to use for
themselves (not to mention our complicated alarm system).

Does anyone here use an automatic system, or have a brainstorm for how we
could keep these poor plants happy? Some of them are decades old... we'd
hate to do them in. Thanks for your input.

Unc