Last spring I created a catchment system (or rather, finished and upgraded the existing system) to catch rainwater off the house. I made some changes during the summer and into the fall as I realized certain aspects of the system wouldn't work as designed.
But I knew I needed to go through at least one winter to finalize everything.
We live in an area that gets extremely hot and dry during the summer, but we also have extreme cold during the winter. Not what some would call extreme (it rarely gets down below 0 degrees) but cold enough to have three or four months of solid freeze in a normal year. I don't want my tanks to freeze and possibly crack, so I needed something to stop the water flowing into the tanks during the winter.
I set up the systems so the water runs first into a primary drainspout, otherwise known as a first flush diverter because it catches the debris, bird poop, etc, that comes off the roof in the first "flush" of any storm. During the winter my first flush system is open, so nothing (or very little) gets past it and into the tanks. The tanks are also open so any water that does get into them will hopefully drain right back out again.
A few weeks ago the whole system in front came crashing down, mainly because I hadn't used the right screws to put up the pipe under the drainspout. So I got that fixed, all screwed in, and this week I ran into another problem--the water backed up into the pipes and froze, backed up more until the rain gutter itself was full of ice.
I got all the ice out and figured out the problem--somehow the horizontal arm of the drainspout/first flush diverter had gotten angled so it had a slight upward tilt. This was enough to have water pooling in the elbow, which of course froze during the night and formed a plug for more water coming down.
It's been a learning process.
1) People living in cold climates will need a way to shut the system off during the winter
2) Even a slight upward angle is going to cause problems, winter or summer
3) If you live in a cold climate, try to make sure the drainage pipes are in the sun
4) Don't finalize the system until you're sure it all works together
5) Monitor the system at least weekly during the first year
Showing posts with label water catchment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water catchment. Show all posts
Monday, December 26, 2016
Monday, October 3, 2016
Catchment system update
Last night it rained. I went outside and the front catchment system wasn't filling. The drain had come off (which since I haven't cemented the system together yet was rather expected) but no water was draining out.
Of course the first thought was that the system was plugged. I pulled it apart, but all pieces appeared clear. The water was running down the outside of the pipes rather than the inside.
This morning I went out to check. Got out the ladder and climbed up to look in the rain gutter, and sure enough the drainspout fitting had been pushed up so the water was draining around it rather than through it. So if there's just a little water, it's not going to get into the pipes. If there's a lot of water it'll rise high enough in the rain gutter to go over the lip.
Pushed it down and it should drain correctly now.
The catchment system is still a work in progress. I want to make some changes, build in a way to flush the system for example, but that will have to wait. I have other projects at the moment. Right now I'm going out during and after each storm to identify any weaknesses. Some of the pieces will need to be cemented in before the cold hits, but most will remain just as it is until next spring.
Part of the testing is making sure that the system will drain appropriately when everything freezes. This means I have to go through at least one freeze-thaw cycle to understand how the system works and how it needs to be changed to accommodate unforeseen variables.
December update
Of course the first thought was that the system was plugged. I pulled it apart, but all pieces appeared clear. The water was running down the outside of the pipes rather than the inside.
This morning I went out to check. Got out the ladder and climbed up to look in the rain gutter, and sure enough the drainspout fitting had been pushed up so the water was draining around it rather than through it. So if there's just a little water, it's not going to get into the pipes. If there's a lot of water it'll rise high enough in the rain gutter to go over the lip.
Pushed it down and it should drain correctly now.
The catchment system is still a work in progress. I want to make some changes, build in a way to flush the system for example, but that will have to wait. I have other projects at the moment. Right now I'm going out during and after each storm to identify any weaknesses. Some of the pieces will need to be cemented in before the cold hits, but most will remain just as it is until next spring.
Part of the testing is making sure that the system will drain appropriately when everything freezes. This means I have to go through at least one freeze-thaw cycle to understand how the system works and how it needs to be changed to accommodate unforeseen variables.
December update
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Water conservation
I live in a desert, with the average rainfall being right around 12 inches (about 30 centimeters) per year. That's ALL year, not just during the summer. I have to laugh when people talk about a drought, then say they ONLY get 10 inches of rain per month. The last time we got rain was about the beginning of May.
Under those circumstances, water use is extremely important. I try not to use anything from outside--no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, I harvest my own seeds...and then I have to cancel out all my gains by buying water from the city. During the summer, I use about 60,000 gallons of water per month. A great deal of that is used to water lawns (a long story that I won't go into at the moment--sufficient to say that the lawns will stay for a while longer).
So let's round (just to make the calculations easy) and say I have a quarter of an acre. That's 10,890 square feet, or 1.5 million inches. If each inch receives just 10 inches of rain, that's more than 15 million inches or 68,000 gallons falling on my property. If I were able to use all of that (and assuming that I'm no longer feeding thirsty grass that needs to be watered three times per week) I could last much of the summer without supplemental watering.
Several problems with that scenario. First, water runs off. Second, water runs down (through the soil and into the water table) and third, water runs up (through evaporation).
The first is relatively simple--slope and grade the soil so that the water has to stay. A dip in the soil of an inch will prevent a great deal of water from running downhill. Fill that dip with mulch, you have a handy catchment area that will slowly drain that water into the soil over time.
The second, there's nothing I can do other than strip off the top 30 feet of soil (well honestly it's sand and rock, not soil), put down pond liner, and put the soil back. Uh...no.
The third, again, is relatively simple. Mulch. Lots and lots of mulch. Mulch every year. Seriously, if I wasn't buying 60,000 gallons of water per month how much mulch could I buy? LOTS.
On my property there is one area that is consistently hotter than anywhere else. I have never been able to do anything with it--everything I put there died. Repeatedly. But this year I did something different. I mulched it. As deep as I could, and this summer every bit of extra plant material I could scrape up went up there. Right now it's requiring one deep watering per week, as opposed to last year when I was watering it every single day and STILL everything died.
Now I'm seeing mushrooms in the mulch, and weeds I've never seen before. The plants are thriving--except in the areas where I haven't finished mulching deeply. There, they struggle, but they're still alive and kicking.
So if I could mulch the garden area like that, could I get away with once a week watering? I already water only twice a week in the main garden, and it has much better soil than the hill area. I'm guessing every other week, or even less once the system is established. That right there would cut my water usage a great deal.
This year I tried something new. Well, several somethings, but this year I didn't till the garden. I planted, and waited. And the plants thrived, with no additional water at all. I didn't water the main garden until the end of May, and everything grew just fine. So if I mulched it deeply, would I be able to stretch that to the end of June? The middle of July? The whole summer?
I don't know, but it's worth a try.
Under those circumstances, water use is extremely important. I try not to use anything from outside--no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, I harvest my own seeds...and then I have to cancel out all my gains by buying water from the city. During the summer, I use about 60,000 gallons of water per month. A great deal of that is used to water lawns (a long story that I won't go into at the moment--sufficient to say that the lawns will stay for a while longer).
So let's round (just to make the calculations easy) and say I have a quarter of an acre. That's 10,890 square feet, or 1.5 million inches. If each inch receives just 10 inches of rain, that's more than 15 million inches or 68,000 gallons falling on my property. If I were able to use all of that (and assuming that I'm no longer feeding thirsty grass that needs to be watered three times per week) I could last much of the summer without supplemental watering.
Several problems with that scenario. First, water runs off. Second, water runs down (through the soil and into the water table) and third, water runs up (through evaporation).
The first is relatively simple--slope and grade the soil so that the water has to stay. A dip in the soil of an inch will prevent a great deal of water from running downhill. Fill that dip with mulch, you have a handy catchment area that will slowly drain that water into the soil over time.
The second, there's nothing I can do other than strip off the top 30 feet of soil (well honestly it's sand and rock, not soil), put down pond liner, and put the soil back. Uh...no.
The third, again, is relatively simple. Mulch. Lots and lots of mulch. Mulch every year. Seriously, if I wasn't buying 60,000 gallons of water per month how much mulch could I buy? LOTS.
On my property there is one area that is consistently hotter than anywhere else. I have never been able to do anything with it--everything I put there died. Repeatedly. But this year I did something different. I mulched it. As deep as I could, and this summer every bit of extra plant material I could scrape up went up there. Right now it's requiring one deep watering per week, as opposed to last year when I was watering it every single day and STILL everything died.
Now I'm seeing mushrooms in the mulch, and weeds I've never seen before. The plants are thriving--except in the areas where I haven't finished mulching deeply. There, they struggle, but they're still alive and kicking.
So if I could mulch the garden area like that, could I get away with once a week watering? I already water only twice a week in the main garden, and it has much better soil than the hill area. I'm guessing every other week, or even less once the system is established. That right there would cut my water usage a great deal.
This year I tried something new. Well, several somethings, but this year I didn't till the garden. I planted, and waited. And the plants thrived, with no additional water at all. I didn't water the main garden until the end of May, and everything grew just fine. So if I mulched it deeply, would I be able to stretch that to the end of June? The middle of July? The whole summer?
I don't know, but it's worth a try.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Permaculture (in a sense)
Over the winter I started doing research into permaculture, learning that we've been using permaculture principles for some time without knowing it. :) Very little organic matter leaves this yard--it's all recycled, one way or another. Leaves and grass are compost, food debris goes in the compost pit. Thicker wood that can't be composted is burned for ash or used for any number of other things. The land is sloped so that there is very little runoff, and xeric plantings deliberately placed where the sprinklers don't reach.
Water is our Achilles heel, but permaculture has a cure for that.
We live in a desert. It rains in the spring and fall, a bare handful of times per year. Snow during the winter mostly runs off rather than soaking in. In all we get about fifteen inches of water per year. Summer temperatures run easily into the 90's and 100's, with near 0 humidity.
This year water prices are going to double or triple, and with more than a quarter acre of lawn and garden that's going to hurt. With that in mind, a few years ago I invested in a water catchment system to catch water off the roof. It's nearly complete. I also finished one of the drainage systems, carrying water from the downspout on one corner of the house across the grass and into the raspberries.
Two years ago we put in the drip system, and the secondary garden is watered by the lawn sprinklers. I'd much rather water vegetables than grass.
So this spring I ran a test. All of the vegetables were put in the ground--and left alone. The only water they've gotten was the rain two weeks ago. With temperatures in the 70's and 80's, I would have expected the water to evaporate quickly, leaving the seedlings languishing. If that had happened I would have watered, but they all appear fat and happy. As of last night (before the rain) the soil in the main garden was dry only two inches down, and in the western garden one inch. Seedlings are all up and amazing. Two transplants have been lost--one tomato, broken when a wall-o-water fell over on it, and a licorice seedling that something ate. Neither died from lack of water.
Last spring we were watering constantly, and the water just seemed to drain away, leaving the soil dry again within a day or two.
Something has changed.
I think we're working with a combination of things. First, each year early in the spring we till up the garden, which allows air in, fluffs the soil so to speak, but also creates more space for water to evaporate from. All that water that's settled deep in the soil during the winter evaporates off. We then plant into this aerated soil, and keep it watered until the seedlings come up. Because of the tilling the soil is broken up deep, allowing all the water to drain off. This year we didn't till, so the water that was in the soil is staying there.
Second, I mulched the surface as much as possible. Grass went down all last summer, and leaves in the fall. This year we will again mulch deeply with grass and leaves, as well as continuing with the deep compost pit.
By planting so that all soil is covered by something living (or a good thick layer of mulch, or both) we should minimize evaporation from the soil. With the use of consciously recognized permaculture principles (rather than just doing what feels right), I'm hoping that water use will be minimized this year.
The recipe for a water-wise garden:
Soil with plenty of organic matter
Mulch (next year's soil)
Plant densely
Catch and reuse (catchment tanks)
Water wisely (drip lines)
Water is our Achilles heel, but permaculture has a cure for that.
We live in a desert. It rains in the spring and fall, a bare handful of times per year. Snow during the winter mostly runs off rather than soaking in. In all we get about fifteen inches of water per year. Summer temperatures run easily into the 90's and 100's, with near 0 humidity.
This year water prices are going to double or triple, and with more than a quarter acre of lawn and garden that's going to hurt. With that in mind, a few years ago I invested in a water catchment system to catch water off the roof. It's nearly complete. I also finished one of the drainage systems, carrying water from the downspout on one corner of the house across the grass and into the raspberries.
Two years ago we put in the drip system, and the secondary garden is watered by the lawn sprinklers. I'd much rather water vegetables than grass.
So this spring I ran a test. All of the vegetables were put in the ground--and left alone. The only water they've gotten was the rain two weeks ago. With temperatures in the 70's and 80's, I would have expected the water to evaporate quickly, leaving the seedlings languishing. If that had happened I would have watered, but they all appear fat and happy. As of last night (before the rain) the soil in the main garden was dry only two inches down, and in the western garden one inch. Seedlings are all up and amazing. Two transplants have been lost--one tomato, broken when a wall-o-water fell over on it, and a licorice seedling that something ate. Neither died from lack of water.
Last spring we were watering constantly, and the water just seemed to drain away, leaving the soil dry again within a day or two.
Something has changed.
I think we're working with a combination of things. First, each year early in the spring we till up the garden, which allows air in, fluffs the soil so to speak, but also creates more space for water to evaporate from. All that water that's settled deep in the soil during the winter evaporates off. We then plant into this aerated soil, and keep it watered until the seedlings come up. Because of the tilling the soil is broken up deep, allowing all the water to drain off. This year we didn't till, so the water that was in the soil is staying there.
Second, I mulched the surface as much as possible. Grass went down all last summer, and leaves in the fall. This year we will again mulch deeply with grass and leaves, as well as continuing with the deep compost pit.
By planting so that all soil is covered by something living (or a good thick layer of mulch, or both) we should minimize evaporation from the soil. With the use of consciously recognized permaculture principles (rather than just doing what feels right), I'm hoping that water use will be minimized this year.
The recipe for a water-wise garden:
Soil with plenty of organic matter
Mulch (next year's soil)
Plant densely
Catch and reuse (catchment tanks)
Water wisely (drip lines)
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