Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:29:49 -0400
From: jack-of-all-thumbs steward
Subject: Re Amy B’s Post on Rainwater Collecting
Over the past few years we have employed three types of rainwater collection at our house to cope with an increasingly low-yielding well.
The simplest approach was a series of partially buried 35 gallon trash barrels, each buried four inches deeper than the preceding, and connected by a short section of downspout as a overflow. In this way, the rain fills barrel #1, which then overflows filling barrel #2, etc. We then dip a two-gallon watering can into each of the barrels to hand water plants. Despite being covered, mosquitoes can find and breed in the barrels, so BT dunks are recommended.
Second, we placed two of the 275 gallon cube-shaped “ag tanks” (still in their metal cages) on a platform raised five feet off the ground, and collected rainwater from a storage building equipped with gutters and downspours. The advantage here is that the raised nature of the tanks makes gravity flow from the filled tanks into a standard garden hose possible for low-pressure watering. However, concerns include the weight (two tons) that the platform must be designed to bear, and the potentially toxic nature of the original contents of the ag tank. (Our tanks previously contained an enzyme used as a hog feed supplement, and so were suitable for watering plants.)
Finally, a few months ago we transitioned to a much more substantial system, with 5000 gallons of storage and ultraviolet light disinfection of the pressurized water. Similar systems are approved elsewhere for potable (drinkable) water.
—
jack-of-all-thumbs
www.selfsufficientsteward.com
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