It’s time for a holiday. Do I trust my flatmates to water my garden? Sorry flatmates, but no, I’m going the install a micro-drip watering system. I’ve used Claber watering systems before, so decided to try a Hozelock system. My budget was approx £60, and I wanted to water 20 plants of various sizes.
Timer:
For the budget, the Hozelock timer is far superior: you can set the time it starts and finishes so you can have it run in the middle of the night ( great for low water pressure areas), the day(s) of the week it runs, & for how long. (up to 120 minutes) The Claber timer only allows for ‘on now’ for a set period of time (up to 15 minutes).
Hose:
Again, the Hozelock system offers a better set up for the budget, where you have a larger hose, with the micro-drippers running off it. This means you can discreetly mount the main hose, and have the smaller hoses hiding behind the container.The Claber system is a series system, so you always end up seeing the dripper hose.
Connectors / drippers:
The Claber comes up trumps here, though the Hozelock system came with more connection parts of various types which was useful. The claber wins here for 2 reasons: product quality, and ease of use. The Claber parts and connectors are built with such a degree of detail, and are much better quality compared to Hozelock. It’s never a good sign where you have to pop the plastic parts out of its mold case, but that’s what I had to do with the Hozelock system. I had a couple of parts that got damaged in the Hozelock setup, and they are not cheap to replace (for any system), so it shouldn’t happen in the first place. Also, the Hozelock parts were tiny! Though it is a microdrip system, it was really fiddly to set up, and knowing how watering system are, and the yearly maintenance they need I might get a little frustrated if I have to do repairs.
All in all, I’d have to give the Hozelock system a better rating than the Claber system, though watch out if you have clumsy gardening fingers, or have fine motor control difficulties! The far more advanced Hozelock timer and the far more discreet hose system do win hands down.
And how did it go? Amazingly well! Didn’t lose a single plant (unlike last time) and they were far happier getting a daily, regular watering, rather than my ‘water when dry’ flatmate instructions – watering worries sorted! Should have done this many, many moons ago…