SOL-C24 Weather responsive Solar automatic watering system.

Easy enough to set up and works well although I think that the plants at the end of the pipe run probably get less water, perhaps I should have organised the run differently.The pump makes a bit of a noise but not too loud. I think that the solar panel is well suited to this application but I would be doubtful about the smaller C12 unit having sufficient area to work properly.I just think that over £80 for a small solar panel, small water pump, electronic timer, and some plastic tubing and drips seems a bit expensive.

I have had two of these running from May to end of September for the last two years and I love them. I use them to water tomatoes, cucumbers, chillis, peppers, courgettes and butternut squash on my patio. I fix each of the solar panels to the fence (facing west, sunny position) above a water butt and I run 24 drippers off each unit. The drippers take a bit of playing around with to get the right amount of water dispensing into the pots. I start my plants with one dripper per pot and the pump set on 1, and increase the water supply, adding in extra drippers where needed as the plants grow. The first year, one dripper was enough but in summer 2018 I increased to two drippers per tomato plant as the units were struggling to keep up in the heat. The cucumbers and squashes each had 3 drippers and the courgettes needed 4. I've had the best crops ever for the last two years and was able to leave these units to water for me while I took the family away for a fortnight camping both summers in August! All I do now for watering all summer is check the water butt levels once a week and top up where necessary. Tips/pointers found by trial and error: 1. don't expose the pump units to frost. I put mine out in May but keep an eye on the weather forecast. If there is a frost warning I put bubble wrap round the solar panels and secure it with a rubber band overnight. 2. I live in a hard water area so scale can be a problem. Drippers get blocked and I unblock mine by dunking them for a couple of mins in a mug of hot water with a tablespoon of citric acid powder stirred in. 3. Sometimes the low water level sensor goes off when the water butt is half full. This has also turned out to be a scale problem and the metal probes needed cleaning. I used the citric acid solution for this too. 4. When fruit starts to appear on the plants I tip half a bottle of tomato feed into each water butt - no more worrying about feeding. 5. In September I take the units down, remove the batteries, and leave them on a windowsill to dry out for a few days. They spend the winter in their boxes on the top of my kitchen cupboards. 6. When starting up in May, install new, rechargeable, charged, batteries. Fix the solar panel into position with the inlet hose submerged in the water butt, and a length of hose attached to the outlet connector with no drippers attached (put a bucket underneath to catch the water) Turn pump to 1 and don't touch it again for 48 hours. By then it should have settled down and got itself into a cycle and you can start adding pipe and drippers. 7. I had lots of bits left over from an old hozelock micro irrigation system and the connectors and tubing all work with this system too.

This is the second I have bought, it works very well. My only reason for not giving it a 5 is that it is slightly noisy, not terrible but it would be good if it could be more quiet

Absolute junk, please, dont waste your money. Display has steamed up, so you cannot set the punp, once the pump is running. you'll be very lucky to supply water to more than 2 plants. You cannot adjust the pipework to push the water to the 3rd, 4th and so on feeder points. Absolute crap.

This is a great product, it’s easy to install, easy to use and irrigates the greenhouse incredibly well.

This solar powered irrigation system has been working well to keep the tomatoes watered for around 2 years. A fault was shown on the display and it stopped working. Contacted the manufacturer with the fault code to find out what was at fault and a replacement pump was sent arrived within two days. Cannot fault the customer service. It’s now working great again would recommend.

Still going strong after 6 years !!

Does what it says