I finally got started on the water collection system for the green house.
Since I wanted to feed the water inside at a specific elevation, I had to elevate the rain barrel to make the gravity feed work.
The first hurdle was how to support a barrel with 400 plus pounds of water in it.
Enter steel reinforced masonry!
I drilled in #4 rebar into the concrete slab and laid the blocks. There are 1\4" steel ties that connect one column to the other. I filled all the cells of the blocks with concrete.
The two columns were necessary so the bungs on the barrel would be exposed underneath. With the barrel upside down, the water will run out of the one of the bungs and into the green house. The other bung has the drain for Winterization.
Filling the barrel is done by a downspout coming off of the gutter.
The downspout goes through the lid of a one gallon bucket that has about 60 1\4" holes drilled into it. I used a one gallon paint filter inside the bucket to filter out the little stuff that made it past the gutter guards. I was trying to avoid clogged valves later on.
Holes were cut through the steel cap and the bottom of the barrel for the bucket to sit flush.
Now that I had the barrel elevated and a way to get rain water into it, I had to come up with a way to keep it there during storms or when the system has been drained for the Winter.
Notice the green cap on top of the barrel. That started as the steel lid from a 55 gallon barrel. With hammer and anvil, I reformed it into, what looks like a family sized bottle cap.
Steel straps, fabricated from banding material, were riveted onto the bottle cap and then fastened with masonry anchors to the concrete filled columns.
Plumbing from one of the bungs brings the water inside where is is piped down the wall.
A little pipe and a couple of spigots later, I have a viable rainwater collection and distribution system in the green house.
it's supposed to rain in the next few days, so I'll get to see if the system actually works as designed.
Since I wanted to feed the water inside at a specific elevation, I had to elevate the rain barrel to make the gravity feed work.
The first hurdle was how to support a barrel with 400 plus pounds of water in it.
Enter steel reinforced masonry!
I drilled in #4 rebar into the concrete slab and laid the blocks. There are 1\4" steel ties that connect one column to the other. I filled all the cells of the blocks with concrete.
The two columns were necessary so the bungs on the barrel would be exposed underneath. With the barrel upside down, the water will run out of the one of the bungs and into the green house. The other bung has the drain for Winterization.
Filling the barrel is done by a downspout coming off of the gutter.
The downspout goes through the lid of a one gallon bucket that has about 60 1\4" holes drilled into it. I used a one gallon paint filter inside the bucket to filter out the little stuff that made it past the gutter guards. I was trying to avoid clogged valves later on.
Holes were cut through the steel cap and the bottom of the barrel for the bucket to sit flush.
Now that I had the barrel elevated and a way to get rain water into it, I had to come up with a way to keep it there during storms or when the system has been drained for the Winter.
Notice the green cap on top of the barrel. That started as the steel lid from a 55 gallon barrel. With hammer and anvil, I reformed it into, what looks like a family sized bottle cap.
Steel straps, fabricated from banding material, were riveted onto the bottle cap and then fastened with masonry anchors to the concrete filled columns.
Plumbing from one of the bungs brings the water inside where is is piped down the wall.
A little pipe and a couple of spigots later, I have a viable rainwater collection and distribution system in the green house.
it's supposed to rain in the next few days, so I'll get to see if the system actually works as designed.
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