COMPLETE Rainwater System START TO FINISH - DIY Greenhouse Build #10

hey everybody my name is Sam and welcome back to Green acre homestead where I'm working more on our DIY greenhouse build today is a very awesome special day in a very special video because I completely build design and showcase our rainwater collection system this project actually started months ago after we did our roof on our greenhouse we knew we wanted to do some stuff inside and I've always had in mind of doing a rainwater collection system thermal mass barrels full of water in the greenhouse type scenario because of all the multiple benefits of having them you know water on hand collecting rainwater having thermal mass to regulate temperature in the hot and cool months all that stuff so I knew as with any project it all starts with your foundation now I could have gotten really elaborate and poured concrete and done some really awesome fancy stuff but as with a lot of this project I'm kind of winging it you know there's a lot of thought process going on but this is my first time doing a greenhouse of this style first time doing any of this stuff so I've been very cautious about locking myself into something that I may regret later as such I dug down to bare solid ground leveled it out and started placing blocks there these are regular 8 by 16 by 8 cinder blocks or I think the other technical term might be like concrete modular unit CMU something like that basically concrete block of standard size I started off with two blocks per hole and I spaced them apart so that my final rack self table whatever barrel holder Arama was wide enough to properly support the barrels after that we laid down the plastic trimmed around the edges and stapled it down with these plastic landscape spikes the plastic in the greenhouse is a do it or Sunbelt brand either one I can't remember off the top of my head but link below you know how we roll and it is extremely durable and last for many many years it is a woven plastic so it allows water to flow through it but blocks any bit of sunlight and vegetation growth so I don't ever have to mow inside the greenhouse I brought the blocks up to a height that would raise the barrels as tall I felt comfortable mounting them in the greenhouse now I didn't stop at the heights because I was afraid of it being unstable or just too tall I stopped there because I wanted to make sure I give myself enough clearance from the bottom of the gutter downspout to the top of the barrel to run some plumage which is another word for pipes plumbing and connect the system together without having any kind of major problems or issues with my Heights in place I then took two four by fours leveled off the system and despite my best intentions hardest work and I was pretty sure everything was level and plumb when I started these center blocks kind of tilt a little bit so there's my wabi-sabi for the greenhouse they're still strong they're still stable I don't feel like they're gonna fall over the pillars on the end or good and plumb so what you gonna do I'm not going to rebuild it so I'll just live with it and try and ignore it as much as I can I like how the barrels up here everything looks great but before I start plumbing these together I want to go ahead and take them down into the yard and give them one final washout these are all food grade and they only had saline in them like medical salt water but I want to give them one last wash and good cleaning before I say yep they're clean they're ready to be used for my plants something that's going to make cleaning these out a whole lot easier is for me to go ahead and drill the holes for the Uni seals that I'm gonna use to plumb these together I'm gonna put it right in the middle of the barrel at least eyeball it as close as I can so I'm go ahead and drill this out I'm gonna use that as my drain port and everything and it'll like I said make washing these out a lot easier this is a 1 and 3/4 inch hole saw which is what you use for a uniseal for a 1 inch pipe so here's a little trick and you see I did normal towards the clockwise drilling and it gets caught for plastic if you put your drill in reverse it goes a lot smoother and gives a better cleaner cut it takes longer and now I gotta finish that plug out but it takes longer but it does give a cleaner cut I was able to flush this plug out the one that I drilled from the bottom was really lucky what didn't I'm doing was filling the barrel with a good amount of water for a little bit flips that ever really quick and poured all the water out of this hole and it came out thankfully it's small enough to where it flowed out freely here's also a look at how thick this plastic is on this barrel that's why these things are so strong and durable and that's probably also why it took so long to drill through it backwards but very cool very thick barrels all right here is a little tip and trick from me these are the bungs that are in these barrels and they sell special wrenches that fit in here for you to tighten and loosen them it's a specialty tool it might not be something the average person really needs to buy especially after you see what I'm about to show you I have here a standard pair of lineman's pliers they are general standard pliers you get from any hardware store I have discovered that they fit perfectly width wise and length wise to lock in here to allow this to be the bung wrench so this fits perfectly right in this notch and you know it's not a perfect fit but it fits in the notch here and back here on the back and as long as you're careful you're really able to cinch this down super tight that's not going anywhere one barrel down four more to go alright I cut me five six inch long pieces of PVC these are gonna be the down tubes that go from the barrel to the manifold below that I'm going to make to connect these to the barrels using a product called uni seal and there's a flexible rubber o-ring that pops into the hole you drill and then the pipe goes through it and it creates a waterproof seal I first found out about these from my friend Seth over Atlanta house he's a youtuber that does a lot of ramp pumps and really cool off-grid water source projects so I'll leave a link to SAS channel down below if you've never heard of him or you're interested in ramp pumps go check him out but he's the one that I first saw this in use on his videos and I thought they were awesome so I finally after years have a project where I get to use them and I'm excited I'm as excited as you can be over some rubber grommets so installation is easy you just pop it into your hole and then you push your pipe through now what I'm going to do to give myself even penetration or depth into the barrel I'm going to put a mark on my pipes at one inch which is thick enough to go through the uniseal but not too far that I really waste pipe so I'm gonna put it in here one inch something to note you can only push through the seal you can't pull back out it's kind of how it works so point-of-no-return in a sense unless I fish it out of the barrel in a little bit this is definitely a tight fit something that's definitely good to do it in this position where I could push down and let the ground support the barrel as opposed to crawling underneath this thing and trying to push up I would definitely just be moving the barrel all around so there we go one inch in and totally steel I'm picking the whole barrel up just by this connection awesome I'm going to do a couple of other steps while I have this barrel right here in front of me and readily accessible I'm going to go ahead and primer and glue on my PVC fittings for this much much easier to do it up here then wait for it to be underneath the four by fours and everything and really difficult to get to this end is done it's a one-inch pipe going into a one-inch 90-degree elbow now I'll put it back up on the rack here and get the other barrels down they're all going to be the same except the other barrels we're going to have a one-inch tee put it in place so that this is the manifold that connects them and then go left and right but this is the end of the run so I don't really need anything here the next little connecting piece someone put together is this this is a actually I think it's a furnished drain or a water heater drain but it's a hose spigot that's really low profile right angle and was honestly the most affordable one I could find in the hardware store even with it being just a quarter turn valve and brass it was still 12 bucks these things have gotten expensive so what I'm going to do is wrap some teflon tape around the threads and then thread it into this adapter that I've got and that goes from 1/2 inch NPT thread to 1 inch slip so whenever this is all tightened down then I want to glue it into this tee and this will allow me to then take this put it in line with the meta fold and then still have a hose valve here accessible for me to hook my garden hose to and use here in the greenhouse there we go I'll sit ready to rock and roll as soon as the rest of this gets put together speaking of the rest of this the fun easy standing and working vertically part of this project is now done what I have to do next is get down on the ground measure my pieces cut my 1 inch PVC sections and glue each barrel to itself the elbows to the t's the t's to each other and then the last tee to the elbow at the end let's just get it knocked out just get it done fluid dynamics being what they are and honestly I'm gonna regurgitate things that I've googled and learned over the years I don't have a degree in a fluid ology or dynamic ology either you can fill barrels from the bottom you can use a manifold or in this case a pipe to fill one barrel and the water will equalize across all the other containers by that pipe on the bottom you don't have to fill each barrel at the same time you'll have to worry about splitting the water amongst the top gravity and water being what water is and doing what water does takes care of the rest as far as evening itself out this is really handy so that allows me to just put my pipes for their gutters into the left and right ends and then just let them fill and happy and do their thing on their own it reduces a lot of the plumbing that I would need and just is great so thanks water and physics and gravity and everything else it's really handy I appreciate it I'm up here on the corner right here at the gutter and I'll go to start building a very primitive but still effective first flush diversion system and then start doing the piping to run it from the gutter here and inside to the barrels I'm using all 2-inch PVC drain waste vent piping I had several pipes that were already here out on our homestead so that's kind of the reason I went this direction so I just went and picked up a couple of little adapters and reducers and tees from the hardware store and total of 35 bucks I'm pretty sure I've got everything I need to make this system I'm going to dry fit everything first to make sure it lines up and works and looks good and then I'll come back and glue it the first flush diverter system first flush diverter it's kind of hard to say if you don't know much about them you might be thinking what does that mean well here is Sam's definition and disclaimer this is going to be Sam's definition so I reserve the right to be wrong but anything I say first flush it takes the first bit of the water and flushes it down the tubes you don't want that the first amount of rain you get you have all the pollen dust leaves bugs kim trail dust I don't know whatever you want to say sitting on your roof the first amount of water you get you don't want to take that and funnel it into your rainwater collection system that's junk so you take that first water and flush it you don't flush it down the toilet but you flush it down into the yard and into the grass and out of your way diverter is the fact that whenever this larger pipe is full the water will then start to divert over and that should be clean the roof should be fairly rinsed and washed and that will divert over to your rain barrels that's that's the good stuff as good as you can get without going crazy but that's the good stuff we want to collect and use in our garden and elsewhere there is Sam's definition of what is a first flush diverter first rain flush it then divert the rest keep it save it use it and high-five yourself and giggle as you water from your barrels here's a trick for how to make sure everything lines up as you glue it put you some dots on the pieces that you have yet to glue on all your joints that way you'll know where to line them up that so you get the exact same angle on each piece now you can comfortably and safely take them apart and glue them knowing they'll be right all the parts pieces materials and fittings and all the stuff you see here with the exception of the Uni seals I got from our local mom-and-pop hardware store they are simple common plumbing fittings such as 2-inch PVC some elbows some tees some three inch to two inch adapters clean-out plugs all that kind of stuff you should be able to find every single bit of this project all the materials and pieces with the exception of the Uni seals at your local hardware store my goal with this was not to show you guys a commercial first flush diverter system and tell you go by it my goal was to show you how to take materials you have on hand or that are readily accessible cheap affordable things you can buy a little bit here and there at a time start to get your horde amassed every good homesteader has a horde and then you can go about building your system and it won't be so detrimental to your back pocket aka your wallet that being said I'm sure there's a lot of really cool commercial first flush diversion systems that are neat and fancy and look probably a lot prettier than this one but I like to think of this as having a rugged charming characteristic not too dissimilar as myself round a little dirty and scuffed up but you keep it around cuz it actually does some work and does work good I put a one-inch PVC overflow out of the top of all five of these barrels in theory unless we just get a monsoon to two inch pipes feeding should not exceed five one inch pipes draining hopefully we'll see you guys gonna stay tuned you know I will let you know if this works out or if it's a tragic failure I'm not hiding behind no smoke and mirrors there's no mirrors out here there's no smoke so if it works I will tell you I will show you and we will all high-five each other and if it doesn't work I'll tell you I'll show you will cry a little bit and then I'll fix it it's the joy of YouTube it's the joy of you know me being a down-to-earth dude showing you what happens in reality because otherwise it would be a huge disservice to you guys for me to never tell you this was a failure and you go do it at your place and you realize it's a failure I don't wanna do that to you guys you don't me do that to you so we won't look at it real it is all done and wouldn't you know it now that the rainwater system is hooked up and ready to rock and roll there's not any rain in our immediate forecast no there you go if you're having problems with rain it's your gardener place build a rainwater collection system it's sure to drive it away that's okay I'm going to get out the water hose and give this thing a trial run and test let you guys see it in action and all that really really awesome cool amazing stuff and then also make sure that it actually does work the way it's worked in my head for a while let's make sure it works here too alright that was a fail these holes are way too big but it's alright we got duct tape here we can fix these holes well guys I don't know about you but I am thrilled excited and actually looking forward to some rain come on where's it at I'm sure it'll be here soon enough and when that day comes you can guarantee I'll be out here all giggly look in and seeing how it works watching the barrels fill up and then playing in the water some more if you have any questions or comments anything that I didn't cover went too fast on or you just have something in general to say leave me a comment down below love to get them read them and I try and reply to all of them as well otherwise we'll see you guys next time I appreciate you watching if you haven't seen the rest of the build videos for this greenhouse there's a link to the playlist down below and as usual there's a card at the very end of the screen on what video YouTube thinks you'll like to watch best from us next thanks for watching we'll see you guys next time on the homestead

Channel: Green Acre Homestead

Views: 549,903

Keywords: green acre homestead, diy, green acres, rainwater, harvesting, system, rain, water, collection, rainwater collection, rain barrel, rainwater barrel, how to collect rainwater, first, flush, diverter, first flush diverter, best rainwater system, diy rainwater, how to harvest rainwater, how to, harvest, rain water, first flush, pvc first flush, first flush system, first flush rainwater diverter

Id: 7NqersxGuVo

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020