nandina, You are right on. I posted a link below on the one I built for a cattle watering tank. One other thing that should be added is a storage tank built above the garden level. The volume should be large enough to accommodate watering needs. This will give the pressure needed for most any system. I would highly suggest drip irrigation. My system is pumping water about 20 feet vertical and over 300 feet horizontally using a water fall of about 3 feet and a volume of about 5 gallon per minute. Here is a link that might be useful: 'ram pumps'

I had the same problem once, and eventually traced it to, of all things, the particular type of CFL light bulb I had nearby interfering with the remote-control receiver on the TV, causing it to change channels or turn on or off by itself. I noticed it only happened when the light was on, so I changed bulbs and it went away. Changed the bulb back temporarily after a month just to be sure I had it right, and the problem reoccurred. I also have a compact-fluorescent light bulb in my bedroom that sometimes sets off the smoke detector when I turn on the light. I had to move the smoke detector. I don't know what the deal is with these things, but I don't want to switch back to incandescent bulbs and use 4x the electricity, and LEDs are still too expensive. I don't have a DVR but am thinking about a Magnavox MDR515H/F7, a DVR designed for recording over-the-air/antenna programs, and can also burn DVDs of anything you want to save permanently or give to someone else. It's affordable and easy to use; too bad it's not HD. Another approach that's becoming popular is to use a computer set up specifically for TV viewing, a sort of uber-DVR. These are called home theater PCs (HTPC). Or I could just stop watching TV and do something else....

I have one. I go through easily 3-4 liters of seltzer a day and it was getting expensive and hard to lug that many plastic bottles home from the store. We have the 130L cartridge one (from Costco), but because I like it really fizzy and I go through so many liters a day, it was empty in a couple weeks. And I could only get the smaller sized refill canisters at the local stores -- I would have had to mail-order the larger ones. So I invested a little more in a freedom one hose from a company called CO2 Doctor. It lets you hook up a 20lb CO2 tank (like you'd find in a restaurant fountain soda machine) to the sodastream. Although the initial outlay was high -- about $100 for the sodastream, $100 for the freedom one hose, $65 for a used CO2 tank on craigslist, then $30 to exchange the tank for a full one at the local Airgas -- my expenses now are nothing -- one $30 tank of air lasts me almost a year -- at an average of 3 liters a day with several extra pumps per bottle. If I was more frugal with the carbonation level, it would last close to 2 years. So now the $30 that used to get me about 2 weeks worth of seltzer gets me 10 months. Definitely one of the best purchases I ever made. One downside - you will have to find a place to put the 20lb co2 tank - it's big and heavy. We have our sodastream sitting on a pantry shelf with the tank sitting on the floor, all hidden behind the closet door. My sister has friends (who told us about the freedom one in the first place) who keep their sodastream on the counter and the tank in the cabinet below (they drilled a hole for the hose in the counterop). I have no affiliation with the CO2 doctor website or the freedom one product, but if you are a heavy sodastream user and you have the room for the larger tank, I highly recommend it! (I will link to the CO2 doctor site below -- they also have products that let the sodastream take paintball gun CO2 canisters -- apparently, that is also cheaper than purchasing refills through sodastream....) Here is a link that might be useful: Freedom One

I'd be tempted to use some sort of shallow and wide flower pots maybe painted black or otherwise disguised. I like black for ponds but other colors might work too. You could use your already cut liner for them. Another idea might be to form the basin from a cement/concrete mixture and place underlayment and liner over those. You could pour the cement in place after digging your shallow depressions and press something down inside to form your basin.