Gardena Water Distributor automatic: 6-point distributor, simple operation, space-saving, allows flexible use, ideal even at low water pressure, 3/4 inch outer threads (1197-20)

Was looking for some way of arranging the irrigation without too many different water outlets from the tap.This seems to work for the purpose intended. I needed to water specific areas in a moderately sized garden at different times for different lengths of time.As others have asked questions about this, the water outlets switch from one to another based on water pressure. As soon as the water pressure is removed from the inlet (i.e. tap turned off), the distributor switches to the next water outlet. Obviously you have to have the water turned on again for this to send water out the 2nd outlet. There are 6 outlets and 1 inlet. A minimum of 2 outlets are active - otherwise there is no point in having this unit.I control the length of time to each water outlet through a water timer. How this is done is up to the requirements.Overall an excellent product made even more excellent through the one-day amazon offer.

Great idea for watering multiple hedges. I had a huge amount of hedges put in this summer (36 x 2.4 meter laurel hedges) so needed a good irrigation system setting up to water them.The problem was I only had one tap! That's where this came in to be a bit of a godsend. After a lot of head scratching manage to get all the components together to make this work. I bought the timer ( master digital water timer) which allows 6 different and independent schedules to be set up, plus about 80 meters of water hose and a basic drip irrigation system split into six blocks.To cut a long story short, it works! Saves me having to go out and water the hedges every 3 days, just set the timer and it's all done for you. Great little invention.

Great idea poorly executed. I have persevered with this for a year now but still have failed to get it to operate as it should with any consistency. The unit regularly fails to switch lines or properly engage the next line so you end up with water going to several lines at once, the water pressure drops and it results in no lines efficiently watering your garden. Piston inside of unit regularly fails to fully engage next line for watering and window over line number indicator mists over so you cannot see which line is currently open. Using the distributor coupled with the water master programmer reduced the water flow output by 50%, this was demonstrated by doing a bucket fill test using a 10 litre bucket. When connected to the tap direct and not routed through the water master and distributor it took 48 seconds to fill the bucket, but with them in line it took 95 seconds. When I asked Gardena there was such a reduction in flow rate and pressure when connecting their products their answer quite incredibly was that the bucket test showed that there was insufficient pressure from the tap, despite having a photo showing the sprinkler running fine when connected directly to the tap without timer and distributor. Nowhere in the advertising does Gardena inform consumers that using these products will result in a 50% drop in pressure so you will need 2bar to start with from your tap for them to work so Save your money for something that actually works as it should.

First and foremost, this does work, and it works fairly well, but it's not perfect. I don't think it has been sufficiently tested with only a subset of the outlets being used, and if you set it up as intended, you can end up with the mechanism seizing up.Under normal operation, when you disconnect the water supply (via timer, or manually) the water pressure inside will drop and the spring-loaded mechanism will trigger a rotation to the next outlet. When you turn the supply back on, pressure will be restored and water will come out of that outlet until you next disconnect the supply and repeat the process.At least, in theory.I use only 3 of the possible 6 outlets, and sometimes (for whatever reason) it rotates onto one of the outlets that I do not have enabled. As I had capped off the unused outlets per the instructions, the pressure would not release, and therefore the spring-loaded mechanism would never rotate to the next outlet. There is a button for manual rotation, but good luck pressing it. I've never managed to push it in when the mechanism is pressurised. The only thing I could do was gently unscrew the cap on the wrongly selected outlet until the pressure dissipated and caused rotation to the next desired outlet.The workaround here is to simply not cap off any of the outlets, and run hoses from all of them, with the "unused" outlets running to a convenient drainage point.Considering the price, and that rotating between outlets is literally the only thing this product exists for, you would think it would cope a bit better and be more robust/reliable.Overall, it's fine assuming you either want to use all of the outlets, or are happy to drain off the unused ones. Frankly, there's no realistic alternative apart from maintaining a pressurised system with lots of timer/smart valves which are only activated one at a time, which would be more expensive and annoying to administer.

Simple to install.

I purchased one of these to provide a more cost effective water irrigation solution. I am running 5x 20m and 1x 30m hoses and barely see any drop in pressure. We have 2bar pressure and it does not cause any issues that others have reported. I have this coupled with a BT controller to run 2x hour cycles each day with 10 mins running time and 10 second soaking time and it has never missed a beat for the past 8 days of using it. Very pleased with the purchase.