After some dithering, the other day I finally got around to installing a tap in the greenhouse. Up till now I’ve had to wear the grass out by walking the length of the garden to the main outside tap which is on the side of the house. Whilst child #4 is a more-or-less willing helper, she fetches a disappointing quantity of water each visit. Something must be done! Fortunately, others have solved this problem…
To complete this little project I needed:
- Length of hose
- Brass extension tap
- Metal hose fittings
- A few screws
- Two hose clips
- A tap manifold
This is a pretty straightforward deal, essentially involving running a spur off the main tap, all the way to the greenhouse.
To avoid the inconvenience of changing hose fittings every time I wanted to use the main tap for some other purpose, I’ve invested in a splitter, or manifold. I’ve had a number of these over the years and the current one is brass, screw fits onto the tap and has four outlets.
Two would be enough for this, but I also need to fit some irrigation timers so wanted spares. To have effort-free water in the greenhouse I also want to avoid having to turn the main tap on before traipsing down to the greenhouse. I just want water on demand. It’s important then that the manifold has independent taps. This means I can leave the main tap on the whole time, and use the splitter taps to control the flow. Now it’s all connected up I just leave the relevant splitter tap in the on position and control the flow with the tap at the greenhouse end.
The hose is run down the garden behind the shrubs, right up against the fence so it’s out the way of the detrimental attention of garden forks and other stabby implements.
I burrowed my way under the greenhouse wall, through various weed matting defenses and fed the hose through.
I’ve simply attached the tap to the leg of some convenient greenouse staging.
The tap is a simple one designed for this exact purpose. The supply hose is attached via a normal hose attachment.
I’ve opted for metal hose attachments on both ends. In my (bitter) experience the normal plastic ones don’t stand up to mains pressure for ever and will eventually pop off, resulting in a deluge, a lot of wasted water and big water bills. If that happens whilst away that can be properly expensive.
So, metal Hozelock attachments. These are extortionately expensive compared to the bog-standard plastic ones, but will allegedly stand up to mains pressure without popping off. Up to 9 bar which is loads. It is a bit of an outlay but hopefully will last ages and prevent any diluvian events.
It’s simple to connect up, and I now have water whenever I need it in the greenhouse.
It makes me smile every time I fill up the ‘can! As a bonus, the greenhouse is close to the veg beds, so I also now have easy access to a tap to water that lot. Happy days.
Sadly, child # 4 is now redundant, she’s been automated out of a job. Sorry girl, that’s progress! Might let her use the tap…
I’ll be back soon with more propagation tales.
The Propagator 
Great minds think alike, clearly. Still making me smile…
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You read my mind! I also installed a tap in my greenhouse at the weekend. It’s so amazing having water on supply. It makes the whole watering of everything in there soooo much easier.
I haven’t seen one of those nifty four tap splitters before – the one I have is just for two so I may have to invest in one of those some time! Good to know about the metal connector that should withstand mains water pressure. At the moment, I’m on cheapy plastic for a quick fix, but do let me know how the metal ones do because I think I may follow your lead with that one.
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