|
If you really want to get serious about
rain catchment, you might consider installing a larger tank
that holds several hundred gallons and uses a small pump
to distribute the water throughout the landscape. The advantage
of a larger system is it will capture and store more water
during the rainy season and then you will be able to use
it during times when we receive either low amounts of rain
or none at all.
Capturing, storing, and using rain is not
a new idea. In fact, it dates back centuries to the ancient
Roman civilization and is still practiced in many areas
around
the world as a source of water for drinking and irrigation.
With the development of municipal water treatment systems
and well construction equipment, capturing the rain from
roofs was abandoned as a means of obtaining water supply.
However, today, many homeowners and businesses are turning
to rainwater collection systems as a way to supplement
water supplies, particularly for landscape watering needs.
Here
in Rhode Island, the practice makes a lot of sense. Annually,
we receive about 42 inches of rain. A one-inch
rain on a 1,000-square-foot roof yields 600 gallons of water.
That’s a lot of water. Capturing this rain and putting
it to good use in our landscapes can help to conserve water
and reduce stormwater runoff. These
systems can either be above- or below ground.
Richard
Tyre, a URI Master Gardener, has examples of both at his
home.
Two
above-ground cisterns, shown below, have the capacity to
store 300 and 500 gallons
of water in
plastic tanks. About 1/4 of the roof area drains rainwater
into each of the cisterns. They have been designed to allow
the first flush of each storm to by-pass the cistern, thus,
keeping leaf and other debris out of the cistern. A small
bailing pump is placed in each system to pump water to
a vegetable garden, the greenhouse, or to fill buckets
and
water planters.
There
is also a below-ground tank that can store 1,000 gallons
of water. The photos below show the pipes from the gutter
leading to the below-ground storage tank. Here again, a
small bailing pump is used draw water from the tanks and
apply it to landscape plantings.
To
learn more, Richard Tyre is available for presentations
through the URI Master Gardener Association, you can contact
him at 423-2561.
Other contacts and information:
You can do an internet search on "cisterns", "rainwater
recovery" or "rainwater harvesting"
Rainwater Recovery, Inc.
Click
here for a factsheet
from West Virginia University that provides some
design details for cisterns.
|
