Claber 8053 Oasis 4-Programs/20 Plants Garden Automatic Drip Watering System

The purpose of this system is to water your potted plants when you are away. I used it for plants under an outdoor porch. Because my plants were large and high, I mounted a small shelf high up on the wall of the porch, then placed the reservoir on the shelf,filled it with water and set it to 20 days. It worked very well. All plants survived a very hot and dry 2 weeks with one exception: A begonia received too much water!Pros. The watering system sets up easily as long as you read the instructions and mount it high enough so gravity plays its part appropriately. Keep a record of how you place your plants if you plan to use the system more than once, because once you cut the hose, you are locked into that configuration. Once setup, the system is very reliable.Cons. It would help if one could adjust the amount of water dispensed individually for each plant. Right now you can only adjust levels by adding or subtracting drippers. If you have plants that need less water than one dripper will dispense, you are stuck. It would also help if the documentation specified the hose type or offered a way to purches additional hoses so one can create several configurations as the plants come and go.Conclusion: A product worth the money if you value your planst and like to travel.

Our experience with Claber products is that they are simple, well-designed and long-lasting. The Oasis vacation watering device is no exception. We set it up two days before we left on a 40-day vacation. Instructions call for testing in advance of leaving. We did not and the Oasis worked well. 20 plants. All plants alive, well-watered and a little water remaining in the reservoir. Could not be more pleased.The Oasis is not a drip irrigation system. It is a system for watering plants while on vacation.The downside is that one has to arrange all the plants near one another and near the reservoir. Also, the reservoir needs to be at a high point above all the plants: it is a gravity system.The very large upside is that the system is easy to set up and, because it uses gravity, is reliable is a power outage (which we had while on the vacation). The timer uses a 9V battery which easily took us through the entire 40 days. Will use this batter again next vacation.

It took an inordinately long time to set this product up (I'd say a couple of hours) dragging all of the plants from their respective places & arranging them in a group, then finding overflow containers (such as bowls, cookie sheets, etc.) for each one b/c I was terrified of water spilling out & ruining the hardwood floors, then putting down a plastic mattress protector down under everything (just in case the overflow containers weren't enough), then reading all of the instructions & starting the process of hooking everything up. The directions are pretty clear, but I was still having trouble getting the water to flow consistently. It would work for a couple of minutes & then stop flowing. I cleared the air bubbles using the method they recommended, then tried raising & lowering the tank to different heights, then experimented with the lag in the tubes from the tank to the first plant, etc. Nothing seemed to work. I got frustrated and contacted the company & they told me that the water only drips for a few minutes (depending on the # of plants) and then turns itself off automatically, then turns itself on again later in the day, then continues this on/off cycle. NOWHERE in the instructions or in their on-line demo video does it explain this (I got the impression the drips are constant & continuous) and so if I hadn't called, I would have thought it was defective when it actually was working correctly. Having finally gotten this info, I left on vacation for 2 weeks & when I came home, all of the plants were alive and healthy. Nothing had overflown (so it turns out all of the preventative measures I took to protect my hardwood floors were unnecessary). But one thing I should note- I read all of the reviews of this product before selecting the # of days setting, and the general consensus seems to be that you should pick a # of days that is LONGER than the actual # of days you'll be gone (many people who set the # of days to correspond to the actual time they were away complained that their plants were foating away & drowning). So I was gone for 14 days but picked the 20 day setting. This was perfect. The other thing I recommend is taking pictures of your plant arrangement or drawing a map of exactly where the plants were in relation to each other (especially if you have a lot of plants) b/c next time you use it, you have to set them up in the exact same locations. So my review of this product is that I'm very pleased with how well it worked, but that the instructions should have included info about the operation being intermittent so I didn't spend so much time trying to figure out why it wasn't working. My other comment is to make sure you leave yourself sufficient time to set everything up and test it before you go out of town b/c if you wait until the last minute, you'll probably run out of time. It takes longer than you'd think if you have a lot of plants. Other than those complaints, I'm very pleased with how it worked.