Watering system costs

[bodger]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum as we have just bought a house near Sayalonga. The house has a fair bit of land around it which needs watering regularly so we'd like to get a watering system installed, especially as we aren't going to be at the house for around half of the year.

I know it's hard to give an estimate of costs without seeing the size of the area that needs watering but does anyone have a rough guide to how much I should be paying for such a thing? Ideally, I'd like to be able to control it remotely, if possible and I think that, given where the water deposit is and where the main plants are (around the pool), some of the pipes would have to buried under a concrete driveway that runs down to the house so that would add to the cost, I would imagine.

If anyone can help me get an idea of whether I'm being ripped off or not, that would be great.

Plus, if anyone knows anyone that could come and give us a quote to do the work, that would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[gavilan]

cant help with costs but seem to recall Sayalonga short of water and bringing in some restrictions ... which might affect what you are hoping to do

https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/axa ... 23-nt.html

[Wicksey]

A few years back someone replaced the irrigation system at a friend's house. It is a relatively small plot with a fairly simply system of pipework and from memory it was about 570€. It has a Rainbird automated system installed but it's had problems due to the cal in the water. There's now a filter installed and it's been running better, but the gardener does a regular check and makes sure it's all working OK. Personally we would never leave a garden system running without someone to check it particularly knowing how many times we get leaks in our system and blockages due to cal despite the filter we have.

Are you on town water or an agricultural supply like us (no town/drinking water where we live)? It may affect your supply and what you can use it for (I don't think you can use town water to fill a pool in many places for example) bearing in mind Gavilan's link too.

[bodger]

cant help with costs but seem to recall Sayalonga short of water and bringing in some restrictions ... which might affect what you are hoping to do

https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/axa ... 23-nt.html

Yeah, I saw that - I'll have to check with our neighbours as to what it might mean for us but I have a suspicion it won't affect us.

[bodger]

A few years back someone replaced the irrigation system at a friend's house. It is a relatively small plot with a fairly simply system of pipework and from memory it was about 570€. It has a Rainbird automated system installed but it's had problems due to the cal in the water. There's now a filter installed and it's been running better, but the gardener does a regular check and makes sure it's all working OK. Personally we would never leave a garden system running without someone to check it particularly knowing how many times we get leaks in our system and blockages due to cal despite the filter we have.

Are you on town water or an agricultural supply like us (no town/drinking water where we live)? It may affect your supply and what you can use it for (I don't think you can use town water to fill a pool in many places for example) bearing in mind Gavilan's link too.

The cal has been mentioned by a couple of people yes - I think we'll need to filter it. We're on an agricultural supply I think. We've been quoted between €1000 and €1500 for our plot and it just feels like a lot to me but if you're saying that a small plot was €570 then maybe that's not far off?

[gavilan]

water is a scarce resourse in The Axarquia ... and getting more so as months/years go by ... to water an area of land not previously irrigated seems to me to have no regard to the current/future situation ... especially 'as you say ' we aren't going to be at the house for around half of the year.' ... also ?will you be paying someone to maintain/repair that irrigation system in your absence? ... otherwise, you may find leaks adding to your water bill!

[bodger]

water is a scarce resourse in The Axarquia ... and getting more so as months/years go by ... to water an area of land not previously irrigated seems to me to have no regard to the current/future situation ... especially 'as you say ' we aren't going to be at the house for around half of the year.' ... also ?will you be paying someone to maintain/repair that irrigation system in your absence? ... otherwise, you may find leaks adding to your water bill!

It was being regularly watered by the lady that used to own the house - and it's being watered by someone at the moment. So we're not increasing the amount we use. If we don't water it, it'll die (particularly in the summer) and that doesn't seem ideal.

[gavilan]

what is growing on this land that needs water all year ...avocados?

[Enrique]

Hi bodger,
Welcome to The Forum..............

If you're in for the long term maybe change which plants you have in the garden............so you don't need to water.

Plenty of info on the Web about plants for dry areas. Some good info on the california sites as they are going the same way as Andalucia.

[Wicksey]

Some plants don't need much at all. We have a lot bougainvillae and oleanders that do not need a lot of water. We turn our system on and off manually and water a couple of times a week for an hour and things survive OK and we do have trees as well. In the winter we don't water much at all, not that we have much rain but simply because it's so much cooler. We do recycle water a lot, washing up bowl etc always gets poured out into the garden, and our small pool is used for irrigation during the winter when needed and then refilled for the few months of summer that we use it.

Trouble is, the water situation is pretty dire now. Lake Viñuela is down to 12.8% full, and whilst I am not supplied from there, other people's wells are drying up and the supply of water has been reduced and I have seen water tankers delivering pretty regularly around here this summer. (We did live without a water supply and still managed to have a fairly lush garden by planting drought resistant plants such as the aforementioned oleanders and bougainvillae, plus succulents and olive trees.)

[gerryh]

There is an old, long abandoned and fallen down house near to me.
The bougainvillaea seems to flourish very well without any additional watering.
Also, some olive and almond trees and a fig tree nearer me also do well without any additional watering.
Cheers
Gerry

[Wicksey]

Talking of the water situation we have now run out thanks to our neighbour using it all on his mangos, and due to the shortages the water company say that the tank cannot be refilled for another two weeks, so we won't be watering our garden any time soon. I would be frugal with whatever water you have.

[gavilan]

I assume your neighbour wont be able to water his mangos either?!

[Wicksey]

I assume your neighbour wont be able to water his mangos either?!

No, but I'm sure he'll make up for it when we get the tank full again . He's put just over 200,000L in since beginning of July but it's all gone. We're so fed up with him as it's happened numerous times and he never even apologises for using it all . If it wasn't for him the tank would last us and our neighbour a whole year. The tank is supposed to serve only us and our German neighbour according to the contracts we have with him, but he's now planted trees and uses 'our' water. I think we'll have to see about getting a deposito of our own, but peeved we'd have to pay out for that when really there should be plenty of water. It was part of the reason for getting the small above-ground pool as a deposito so at least we can bucket it out to flush the loo.

[gavilan]

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/farmers-water ... 00679.html

[casita-bonita]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum as we have just bought a house near Sayalonga. The house has a fair bit of land around it which needs watering regularly so we'd like to get a watering system installed, especially as we aren't going to be at the house for around half of the year.

I know it's hard to give an estimate of costs without seeing the size of the area that needs watering but does anyone have a rough guide to how much I should be paying for such a thing? Ideally, I'd like to be able to control it remotely, if possible and I think that, given where the water deposit is and where the main plants are (around the pool), some of the pipes would have to buried under a concrete driveway that runs down to the house so that would add to the cost, I would imagine.

If anyone can help me get an idea of whether I'm being ripped off or not, that would be great.

Plus, if anyone knows anyone that could come and give us a quote to do the work, that would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Welcome to Sayalonga. Been living here in the campo near the village for 13+ years. Great place to live, sure you'll love it too...

As to the water. Initially you need to find out wether you are on farmers or town water. There are restrictions with both, albeit different. Farmers water is only turned on every 4 or 5 days currently, well ours is. Town water is constant, at the moment and of course you'll receive monthly bills for the cu metre usage.

[casita-bonita]

Thought. There's a Facebook group, Friends of Sayalonga. If you haven't already found it I would recommend that you join. Useful local information and the ayuntamiento post notices on there. There's also a village website, Sayalonga.es.

[marcusplacido]

Installed a number of off grid systems. They consist of the following:
Solar system
Router with 4G sim
Irrigation programmer with WiFi module
Electronic valves
Usually also included WiFi cameras to monitor irrigation and for security monitoring

All monitored and controlled from phone.

Costs from 2,500 depending on number of valves/cameras, cable runs to valves. 60% of this is the solar system. If you have power and internet the cost for programmer and small (1") valves from 300. Depending on Spec.

Your additional costs are then the piping and drip lines. How much, how far, how many trees/plants etc?

[Wicksey]

The all you need is water, something there's not a lot of around us! Can only hope for a wet winter.