Am going to make my own soaker hose. How big do the holes need to be?

[LittenTree]

I am going to run a hose from my upstairs bath, over the windowsill and into a dead-ended soaker hose so I can just leave it to do its work as it took me 25 mins holding the hose to drain 150 litres last night....

I have enough garden hose to do this with, but what size should I make the holes do you think?

[VivaLeBeaver]

No idea but am intrigued. I take it this is ok in the hosepipe ban as its bath water you're using? How do you get the water to start draining - do you have to suck?

[LittenTree]

This is from another post I put on MN:

"How do I get water out of my upstairs bathroom up over the sill and start the siphon action? DH and I experimented last night- he did something he used to do years ago back in Oz where you repeatedly plunge the hose up and down under water to build up a column of water which gets high enough to tip over the edge BUT he used to use 3-4m lengths of wide irrigation pipe, plunging up to a meter in and out of the water trough whereas we had a little garden hose and about 10cm to play with! He then tried filling the hose from the tap and plunging it into the bath (and suggesting I suck the other end!- I pointed out there was way more air capacity in the hose than my lung capacity!)... anyway, we eventually succeeded in getting the flow going but I don't have 25 mins a night to run 150 litres of water out of a bath and DH had to hold the end in the bottom of the bath all that time...

What I need is some sort of convenient pump, don't I? If only to start the flow going."

Since then I have begun to research small hand pump bulbs like you might use to start the flow from an aquarium like this, Argos or rather expensive for what it is!

Currently, the stumbling block is an easy hose end-stop! I can fold the end over and clamp it but it's a good idea to be able to easily run water through it 'properly' now and then to clear it of any debris.

What do you think?