Automagic watering of a flower bed.

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My Grandmother is having problems keeping her flower bed watered. Right now she has a soaker hose strung along its length, but it is forgotten and the plants die. She wants me to help her set up something automatic, but I don;t know what sort of system would be best.
Should I put a timer on the soaker hose? this would probably be easiest. Should I run pipe and setup a bubbler or drip system? Its about 4.5' wide and runs 70' then curves around the side of the house, narrows to 2' 8" and runs for 24'.
 
Drip system would be ideal. You need to figure out how many drip outlet can run at the same time, and how many you need, and size the number of controls in the timer you buy.

Those tubing is pretty easy to do, but the wiring of the timer to the tubing may be a problem if there are concrete around.
 
I'd just point out that I saw a very simple battery operated daily timer on the shelves at Lowes that let you set frequency and duration of watering for about $30. It was the only such system lke this my Lowes had on the shelf. I took it to the checkout and the register made a strange noise when it was scanned. The sales associate told me that the item was currently "under investigation" and couldn't be sold. Wish I could remember the brand. But just in case you shop Lowes for a timer, you might want to keep that in mind.

Edit: I found the timer in question on Lowe's website. From user reviews, it sounds like people were having them either short out or arrive DOA So stay away if you see it on the sheves in another store: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=pr...l=cr&lpage=none
 
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Yeah, those type of timers appear to have a problem. I saw several on the Home Depot website that had poor reviews because they were filling with water in the rain. Which is awesome. I can connect a drip system to the faucet, but them Im right back at manual forgetful control.
 
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