By Eric Harlan
Published: May 3, 2009
Updated: May 3, 2009
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Last spring I set out on a mission to have a great garden where I could produce all of the veggies my wife and I normally get from the grocery store. The harvest was successful enough for me to continue the venture.  I put in a simple button dripper system to water the plants attached to a battery operated timer to allow the water to come on at 6am and 6pm for x amount of time (based on the heat of the summer).  I looked up the statistics of how much my water bill went up during the growing season. I saw that it went up total about 60 dollars per year, based on the added water of feeding the plants.

It wasn't a lot of money overall but i was interested in both getting my waste of water down as well as conserving what was already falling on my roof as well as decrease the financial aspect of watering my garden and lawn. So I set out to find a few designs for water collection systems. I had a few caviat features I needed to have in a system however.

1) completely automated, i never had to go outside to water my main garden all summer i like that

2) had to be able to hook to my drip system and provide enough pressure to keep the drip consistent and measured

3) had to be maintainable

4) had to be modular and non obtrusive on the landscaping of the yard

5) had to be expandable, I want to expand this system to eventually water all of my garden beds and maybe my yard.

6) as sealed as possible to limit insect reproduction

As I said I looked at a few designs but nothing really met all of those goals. Some were clever and tucked away, while others were powerful but in the wide open and kind of blah looking. Here are a few of the options I looked at:

·         http://www.instructables.com/id/Need-Free-Water%3f--Build-a-Rain-Barrel/

·         http://www.instructables.com/id/How_to_Build_a_Rain_Barrel/

·         http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-rain-water-collector

·         http://www.instructables.com/id/Rain-Barrel-Project/

·         http://www.instructables.com/id/Green-Rainwater/

So I set out. I got my barrels from a friend cleaned them and started pondering how I would set this thing up.  At first I was going to use this option to build mine. I would wrap mine more in vines and foliage to cover up its true purpose. I went out and purchased some of my pvc piping and even cut the hole in my gutter to allow for the downspout to be put in. I soon realized that the slope of my gutter went away from the hole I just cut.  Not to worry I’ll just reslope the gutter.  Well its then I realized that the termination point of my main electric wire from the utility pole connected to my home, directly under the gutter. I was left with very little options at this point. I could either have the electric company come out and move the termination down, or think of a new plan.

One night while having my father over to look at what I wanted to do, he suggested instead of building a frame and stacking the barrels on top of each other, to simply have them sit next to each other under my deck.

A little context, my deck is a very low deck maybe about 3-4 feet off the ground and the space under is utilized for nothing at all. So this seemed like a very good alternative. The existing downspout was there, I could hide my pvc piping very easily and it was right next to the deck. My only issue was the water pressure alone may not be enough to power my drip systems because the location of the barrels and the fact that they were no higher than the existing drip system might not push the water enough, but I had a backup plan in case it didn’t. I purchased a solar powered, timered pond pump that I will integrate into the plumbing to allow for more pressure.

The hardest part of this entire process was to plan the plumbing while not being there to actually test of the pieces you were selecting were going to fit properly. Unless you are a plumber by trade, be prepared to go to the hardware store a few times taking items back and getting new ones. I still have one leak to fix, I dont think I twisted the bottom left cap on tight enough so I have a slow dribble that I need to seal up. However, its important to note that the system filled up completely in 2 decent rainfalls. Thats 110 gallons!

Without further teasing.

 

 

 Water pressure:

The pump:

 

 

 

Update:

 

I need you to help me figure out the last part of my issue.

As some of you may have read im building a water collection system. Im so close, i have all the plumbing done, i have an idea on how to mount the pump. My only issue is how can i automatically regulate the time the pump comes on.

Here's my idea. I bought a pond pump, the kind that has an open bottom of sorts and an outlet pipe that breaks the surface of the pond to "fountain" water up.  Well i didnt really count on this, i figured it would have an inlet and an outlet that i can plumb right up to the outlet pipe on the barrels. So i came up with something pretty ingenious if i say so myself.

Basically I'm going to make an inline sump. In the photo below you see kinda of what i have mocked up so far. I'm going to put a portion in the middle that screws and unscrews so that i can remove the portion and clean the pump out.



Here's the root of my issue though. During the heat of the summer i water twice a day for 15-30 mins. 6am and 6pm the timer that comes with my pump is pretty good but it's limited in the options i have for times. It will only come on, at the same time every day for 1-4 hours, OR stay on all day until the battery is depleted.

Based on my plants watering schedule i would need more frequency and less time overall.  So far the only option i've been able to come up with is to put a normal plant watering timer on the other end of my outlet pipe, the kinda that has a time built in and lets you program it for when you want to water (in my case twice a day for 15-30 mins) and have that go off when its supposed to, and have the pump set on auto and just always trudging along.  I've realized two problems with this. The first is that there will be no juice to do the first watering until mid morning when the sun hits the panel to recharge the battery, The other is that the life of the pump will decrease because it will be constantly running.

 

Any of you creative types out there have any suggestions? Please do tell! This is the last part of my puzzle and then its smooth sailing.

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