Make:

unfortunently our dog, bear, thinks that's his job.
kent

http://www.instructables.com/id/Automatic-Christmas-Tree-watering-system/

See my instructable for a one step solution

We water our house plants this way when on holiday.

Actually, one of the cleverest plant-watering systems I saw was I think posted from here. Someone got an automatic electric timer switch (the sort you can set for "on 1 minute every day" or whatever) and connected it not to a water pump but to an aquarium air pump! They then had a two-liter bottle (or jug, or whatever) and put two tubes coming from the lid: one which piped the air from the pump into the jug, and the other of which ran down to the bottom of the jug, and on the outside ran into the plant pot.

When the air pump came on, the air in the jug displaced the water, which was then pumped through the tube into the plant pot. Simple (okay, not as simple as MrH's), effective, clever, and also reasonably safe (limited water resource meant that even a fail-on could only pump so much water overboard). You would have to fill it occasionally, but hey, it works. You could even hook it up to an X10 system and water your tree from work!

I dunno--I thought it was pretty cool; wish I'd thought of it myself.

Begin forwarded message:
From: "Donald
Date: December 1, 2007 7:44:03 AM EST

Sorry, if I am being redundant, your site mentioned transisatory diffuculties, and I am always scared o' computers, follows is my comment about tannenbaum watering:

I'm not sure I know how to work the forum, so, with apologies, I'm posting here. One guy posted an idea using a wick, like how actual (capillary action) plants work. This is good, but flow rate can be hard to low/hard to moderate. Another guy suggested turning on an air pump to blow water out of a reservoir. This is good, but the pump can be a little loud. Another technique would use the same reservoir, but configured as a siphon, with a solenoid controlling the airflow. Now, instead of a noisy pump, we just have a click noise at onset and turn-off.
Fluid level detection is a subject in itself. There are many solutions, situationally applied. National LM335 (ts) if memory serves, can be used in a self-heat mode, in a rather elegant solution delineated in an application note. This exploits the difference in specific heat between air and water. Ohmic detection can be used, careful to limit the power to avoid auto-zapping! Another consideration with this technique, use noble metals for your sensor, Au or Pt, for example. In either of these cases, an electronic device called a comparator can be employed. If your control scheme is just a flip-flop, additional comparators on the chip can be used as logic gates if their inputs are conditioned with resistors or resistors and diodes, with a little reflection. If ya' wanna get fancy, non-contact techniques might include ultrasonic pulse (time-of-return) or placing the reservoir on a load cell and monitoring its mass. A throwback technique might use a magnet floating in a (low kappa(m)) cylinder buoyed by a cork, monitored externally with a hall-effect sensor.

forwarded --

================I'm not sure I know how to work the forum, so, with apologies, I'm posting here. One guy posted an idea using a wick, like how actual (capillary action) plants work. This is good, but flow rate can be hard to low/hard to moderate. Another guy suggested turning on an air pump to blow water out of a reservoir. This is good, but the pump can be a little loud. Another technique would use the same reservoir, but configured as a siphon, with a solenoid controlling the airflow. Now, instead of a noisy pump, we just have a click noise at onset and turn-off.
Fluid level detection is a subject in itself. There are many solutions, situationally applied. National LM335 (ts) if memory serves, can be used in a self-heat mode, in a rather elegant solution delineated in an application note. This exploits the difference in specific heat between air and water. Ohmic detection can be used, careful to limit the power to avoid auto-zapping! Another consideration with this technique, use noble metals for your sensor, Au or Pt, for example. In either of these cases, an electronic device called a comparator can be employed. If your control scheme is just a flip-flop, additional comparators on the chip can be used as logic gates if their inputs are conditioned with resistors or resistors and diodes, with a little reflection. If ya' wanna get fancy, non-contact techniques might include ultrasonic pulse (time-of-return) or placing the reservoir on a load cell and monitoring its mass. A throwback technique might use a magnet floating in a (low kappa(m)) cylinder buoyed by a cork, monitored externally with a hall-effect sensor.

Couldn't you just use a 2 liter bottle or several smaller bottles strapped to the trunk?
Fill the tree's water tray with water. Fill a bottle with water. (If the tray is too small or the bottle too big a short hose might be needed.) Cover the open end of the bottle and invert with the opening under the water. Open or uncap the bottle under the water. Viola! Just like those dog an cat watering things where vacuum holds the water in the bottle and water doesn't escape until air enter it.
Geez - some people get so complicated! Electronics hahahhaha.

I just did this yesterday morning, as we're going out of town for the weekend, and we realized that there would be no one to water the tree twice per day.

I used a large foam cooler because that's what I had available fast. The only other materials used was a siphon tube stolen from our brewing supplies and a few clothespins to hold the tube.

Fill the tub with a few inches of water, attach the siphon tube so it's at the bottom of the tub. Position it up on a step-stool above your normal tree stand height. Suck the water through the tube until the tube is full, then seal it with your finger.

Stick the other end of the siphon tube into the very bottom of the treestand (should have some water in there already) The water should start flowing from the reservoir into the treestand.

If we left it here, you'd suck all the water out of the reservoir and overflow the treestand. The trick is to move the reservoir to the floor by the tree. The difference in height of water between the two containers will force the water to flow from one into the other until the levels are equal.

Fill the reservoir slowly until the level in the treestand is full. Mark the inside of the container so that you don't overfill it later. To add water, no crawling under the tree, just add it to the reservoir until the fill line. As long as water remains throughout the tube, the pressure will continue to suck water from the reservoir to the treestand.

I threw this together in 15 minutes before going to work so that we'd have a tree watered over the weekend, but for a more permanent solution use a more decorative container such as a holiday popcorn tin. I'd also punch a hole in the side of the container and install the tube using a 90 Degree nylon tube connector so that the lid could be put on.

Unfortunately, I do not have any diagrams or pictures yet.

A somewhat similar design to bajazet's, I pilfered some old homebrew supplies for it.

Get a 5 gallon bucket with a spigot and a lid, and some flexible tube that fits the spigot. Fill the bucket with water. Place the bucket in an elevated position above the water level of the treestand. Put the lid on the bucket to create a seal. Run the hose from the spigot to the treestand making sure the end of the hose is below the water level of the treestand. Open the spigot. When the tree sucks up enough water for the level in the tree stand to go below the end of the tube air will be released into the bucket and water will flow into the treestand.

I used this last year when I had to go out of town for 10 days on business. I had a friend check the level in the bucket every few days. System worked great, no leaks or anything.

I had an idea involving an external reservoir but didn't require an air-tight container:
<center><a href="http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV17HYT0" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.postimage.org/aV17HYT0.jpg" border="0" /></a></center>
An open-topped (or at least non-sealed) external reservoir is attached to the tree's water supply by a tube at the bottom. The reservoir is kept at the same height as the tree's supply. The water level in each container will remain level; you can easily see how much water the tree has, plus you can refill the external reservoir without having to crawl beneath the tree. If you use a larger or deeper reservoir, you can extend the time between refills substantially.

The one benefit this has over the ones that rely on an air-tight reservoir is that there is less of a risk of leaking. A tiny air leak in an air-tight reservoir system could eventually overflow the container under the tree. This idea doesn't store as much water, though. You also need to put a hole in the bottom of the tree stand, which is additional work.

I made a simple siphon this year. I used a 2 gallon bucket and some tubing from the hardware store. I then placed the bucket in a wrapped box with an easy open top so that it would blend in with the tree.

It all works great. The one caveat is that if you let the water get too low, the siphon will stop working and need to be restarted. That can be a pain, but as it is I can hold a lot more water at one time than the stand alone and I can leave the box in a location that is easy to fill.

My father in law bought us something like this <a href="http://www.safechristmas.com/how_to_use.htm"> watering stand </a> (from an oregon company though) a few years ago. It worked great:

- Hole in side of tree trunk
- plastic 'spigot' plugged into tree
- tubing
- elevated water reservoir

Sounds like AaronH and I had the same idea.

The Best thing about this design over the "lift an airtight bucket and stick the tube in the stand" idea is that

1) We don't have to worry about air leaks.
2) We can fill the reservoir without removing the waterer.

Stokes-
Your design is similar to mine, except if you use the siphon pressure instead of regular gravity, you don't have to drill the hole in your stand and reservoir and risk a leak.