Smart Water Irrigation System

A smart water timer that screws onto an outside tap and waters the garden on a schedule from your phone, whether you are in the house or out of the country.

• A smart water timer screws onto the tap you have
• Watering while you are away is the point
• It skips a watering when rain is coming
• Read this before ordering: it needs USB power
• Build and rating

A smart water timer screws onto the tap you have

A smart water timer goes on the outside tap and the hose goes on the other end. Nothing else about the tap changes and no plumbing is involved.

The inlet is a standard 3/4 inch thread, which is what nearly every garden tap here uses. It works between 100 and 800 kPa and passes 500 to 1700 litres an hour, so it handles drip lines, soaker hose and an ordinary garden hose without complaint.

Watering while you are away is the point

It joins your Wi-Fi directly, with no gateway to buy, and everything lives in the Tuya or Smart Life app: schedules, durations, countdowns and a manual soak.

The useful part is that it works from anywhere. A garden watered on schedule while you are out of the country is the difference between coming back to a garden and coming back to a job. There is also a button on the face for a manual run without reaching for a phone.

It skips a watering when rain is coming

The app can read the local forecast and skip a scheduled run when rain is on the way.

In a Dar rainy season that is worth having: a timer that waters regardless during the long rains wastes water and drowns roots. It is a forecast rather than a sensor, so it is a sensible precaution rather than a guarantee.

Read this before ordering: it needs USB power

This timer runs on 5V USB power, not batteries. There is no battery compartment.

A 190cm USB lead comes in the box, so you need a USB supply within reach of the tap. Outside, most taps do not have one. If there is no socket out there, the version with a solar panel is the one to take, and it is a much smaller problem to solve at the time of ordering than afterwards.

Build and rating

The body is ABS and the manufacturer rates it IP67, which on a fitting that lives outdoors on a tap through a rainy season is the figure that matters.

It draws under 1W, so the USB supply can be the smallest phone charger you own. One outlet, so one hose or one drip line per timer; for two zones you need two timers. Install Smart Life before the timer arrives and the pairing takes two minutes: it is on Google Play.