posted 2 years ago
For the misting system, it worked great but only for a short for a time. The nozzles were clogging after just a few days due to my hard/ high calcium well water. I will use again but only after getting a better water source. The plan is to collect rainwater and store it inside in a 1000L IBC. I don’t yet have gutters installed so this is a future project. It will also require buying another water pump to pressurize it.
The system that is in place now consists of:
House waterline at 50psi
Connected to a solenoid from AliExpress with garden house fittings on each end. I opted for a 120v AC powered version rather than 12v dc.
Water then flows out of the solenoid and then into a generic misting system from Amazon. 1/4” waterline and 10 low pressure brass misting nozzles.
The power to the solenoid is connected to a relay switch. Since its standard AV voltage there are Many many different options here, like Wi-Fi enabled switches, simple digital or mechanical timers, etc. anything that can control Christmas lights, etc …
In my case I went with using an ESP8266 microcontroller with a relay. Many options available online.
The program I wrote for the ESP8266 get temperature and humidity readings from my existing node that is measuring this for my climate battery fan. It it does a little calculation and turns on the relay if needed. The hotter is is the more often is turns on. I personally settled on a misting for about 10 seconds max, after that water starts building up on leaves. Instead of running longer it just mists more often.
I would be happy to share the Arduino code if anyone is interested.
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