Our first project was to set up water collection barrels on the doghouses (we're staying at my parents house for most of this growing season, and my mum breads dogs). We used a method we'd heard about at Earth Activist Training: slicing a corrugated plastic tube down one side and clipping it onto the edge of the roof. This worked fairly well, though it's not as easy to do as we thought it would be, and wouldn't work on a lot of roofs. It's also unfortunate that these plastic tubes, designed to cover up electrical cables, only come in horrendous colours!
Next we wanted to put our main water collection unit in the stable, right next to our garden. The water is caught off the roof in a regular gutter, and then comes in through a hole in the wall and down into a line of previously tripe-filled barrels, connected at the bottom.
This is where we did a lot of the learning (a.k.a we had lots of issues). First, it was impossible to find connectors specifically designed for this purpose (such as bungholes). Not knowing the French word for it didn't help either. So we settled for using what turned out to be the cheapest solution, using connectors designed for gas pipes.
So, here is the first piece of advice to anyone attempting to construct a similar water catchment system: make the holes just the right size. This might mean buying a drill-bit, but it's really going to save you a lot of work in the end. We thought we could skip this and make approximate holes, and then use silicon to seal it, but no. Silicon is not meant for this; it does not withstand pressure. So at first it seemed water-tight, but when the barrels filled up water started to seep through the holes (notice that the wooden support under the barrel on the left in the photo above is wet). And once it's wet, silicon won't stick, so you can't add any after the fact. In the end we got some special silicon for swimming pools, and smothered that on, but even that hasn't been sufficient yet. The leaks are very slow, so it works anyway, but in the long run it might get worse.
Another thing to think about: the overflow has to be proportional to the amount of water that comes in. I know, it's logical, but we just stuck a regular garden hose on for the overflow, and now that at last we've had a good rainstorm, the stable is flooded. Honestly, when we started working on this system, what really weighed in our minds was knowing how dry the summers are here. We weren't thinking much at all about the spring rainfall and overflowing barrrels! So yeah, remember to have a large overflow pipe.
In the end, though we got the barrels virtually for free, once you count the price of the connectors, the silicon and so on, this DIY system was far from free, or even cheap. But like I said, we learned a few things, so we don't regret it. And now we have probably a good 1500L of water stored here, to add to the 8000 or 9000L stored in other containers around the place.
We were planning to have another similar setup in another location too, but in the end this one took up all our attention and the other barrels are just outside in their raw state, waiting for us to find them a permanent location.
4 comments:
You need some sort of waterproof putty to bung up the holes. There has to be a sealant available that sets absolutely solid.
Hi Robert! Thanks for your comment. Actually we tried two different kinds of putties that were supposed to be waterproof. One of them didn't stick well to the plastic of the barrels, which I think is common with these putties, and the other stuck much better to my gloves, rendering the task of applying it near impossible. All in all, the swimming pool silicon isn't too bad. Really we should empty the barrels to fix them though, so that the water pressure doesn't push holes in the silicon, but we're worried the barrels wouldn't fill up again for a while.
I use only rainwater for my garden, although my climate is a lot wetter then yours.
I think the 'trick' you're missing is you should connect the barrels at the top instead of the bottom. In this way your connections aren't under pressure, and it won't matter if they leak a little. Also you don't lose all of your water with a single leak. For this you could for example use a piece of plastic tube that might be used in an aquarium, or maybe a garden hose. The idea is you install this tube several cm from the top of the barrel, so you don't end up with something that's so full it sloshes over everytime you touch it, but also so if there's a heavy rain there's a little buffer room before the barrel overflows like you described.
Then you either need to find a tap for the bottom that doesn't leak, or you need a removable lid so you can take water out of the top by submersing a bucket or watering can. If you have a tap at the bottom, you'll also need to raise the barrel a bit so you can fit a container under the tap.
Here are a few posts:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/2008/01/garden-pictures-growing-garlic-and-water-containers/
(What I do now is have a number of free standing containers around the garden, and move water around by hand instead of connecting them with tubes. The containers I use have lids designed to collect small amounts of water, which means over the course of the winter they fill on their own.)
http://futurehousefarm.blogspot.com/search/label/rain%20harvester
(these guys had some problems with their design...)
Hi Patrick, thanks for the advice. The reason we chose to link them at the bottom was simply that this way we could just stick a tap on the end one and drain all the water from that point. It would be a hassle to dip a watering can in the top, and even more so to put a tap on each barrel. I think the design was alright (aside from the size of the connectors and overflow, which are a bit small), but next time we'll be better at the handy work, especially drilling clean, precise holes!
All in all, dipping a watering can into a barrel is not difficult at all, and if we could have had the barrels disseminated throughout the garden we would have been happy with that (though I'm not sure it would have looked great).
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