Irrigatia 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 bought this because I am away a lot and I love my hanging baskets. I have used this for the whole of the summer now so feel I am in a good position to review it. I found the fittings a little tricky but with help of my friends, managed to get them secured without leaks. I miss calculated the amount of rube I needed but it was easy to order more. I found the instructions hard to understand and setup was a bit of a trial, but once we got there, it has been a very reliable watering system. It has kept my baskets moist all summer. It does what it says it will.

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.

Incredibly loud pump - it sounds like a machine gun! It's so loud that we've had to replace it with a different brands solar pump.

Simple to set up, working well after a months trial.

This is an amazing product and made in Yorkshire which I appreciate being a Yorkshire man.I have had it running for almost a year now though it is Gran Canaria where there is a lot of Sun and have had no issues.I did call them for a few tips on how to use and they were fantastic am about to buy another one.

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

Only three stars but I think I have been unlucky.Set it up fine but there are a few unanswered questions.How long is it meant to run for? Never got past watering once ..When I turned it on it run for about five hours non stop.It certainly pumped well I have two raised beds with soaker pipes.It then stopped The next day being positioned at three was flashing at three flashes the next day still not charged.I took the batteries out and charged them.The next morning I put them back in at setting 2.I went out all day and seven hours later when I came back it was still going full blast and had flooded everything.I waited until it stopped.The next day which was Sunny it was recharging but it never charged up so I have sent it back.Amazon was great as all I wanted was a replacement but as it was sold third party I had to return it and order again.I will order another one as it is well made and the pump works well but I could not get it to water on a regular basis and it just kept going for hours.I could not find anything in the instructions to tell me if I was doing anything wrong .I watched YouTube and read everything but I could not get it to work.Better luck on the new one.There should be a helpline from the company