How to Build a 550 Gallon Rainwater Harvesting System

hello everyone this is jeff japani nature hacker and i'm delivering you solutions to help nourish your mind body and soil today i'm going to be building a 550 gallon rainwater catchment system i brought along some of my friends from orlando permaculture a local non-profit i run here in central florida they're going to help me build the system and learn about rainwater collection so what are some of the benefits of rainwater collection well first of all rainwater is free it's going to lower your monthly bills and you're not going to have to adhere to those local water restrictions you can catch it store it and give it to your garden or use it for drinking water and secondly your plants love fresh rainwater it's loaded with oxygen sulfur potash minerals as well as beneficial microbes that are going to help build your soil and for those living here in central florida who want to help reduce the toxic algae and the fish kills that are affecting our tourist industry well rainwater collection is one of the best solutions it's going to reduce the stormwater runoff that carries with it fertilizers that will feed the algae and cause many of these problems so now that we're excited about rainwater collection let's start building the system to start the project off we first have to remove the top bar from the totes to do that we can use a torque set the torque set will unscrew the bars so we can lift them out of the cage for the next step we're going to cover these up with black plastic and what that's going to do is it's going to prevent algae from growing inside of the totes so these totes are about 3 feet tall and three feet wide so i'm going to roll this out to about 14 feet and then cut it when you lay out the plastic you want to make sure not to sit on it or kneel on it it's very easy for something underneath to puncture the plastic so once it's laid out to 14 feet just draw a line with pencil or some chalk and then start to cut in order to wrap up these totes you're gonna flip it over so that the top is on the bottom then you're going to take the back flap and you're going to fold it over make sure it's going straight across and then you're going to put duct tape on top then you're going to take the front flap and put it over and add some more tape one of the most important things to do when you're wrapping these totes is to make sure that the top flap goes above the others and that's because when it rains it's just going to run down and it's not going to get into the system you can imagine if this was flipped upside down that the rain would start going in here and pocketing at the bottom of the totes once you have the top wrapped up you want to uncover the spigot you can just use a box cutter and just make a slice and work it through so we're just going to make an x on top after cutting your x you don't want to cut off those flaps just take them and just tuck them under here right under the liner just like that now that the tote is all wrapped up we want to reinsert it back into the cage just be very careful not to tear the liner over here what we're doing is we're leveling out the surface and then we're putting these paver bases down this is only twelve dollars for a hundred square foot so i decided to use this instead of the p stone or gravel i used sixteen cinder blocks to support this system as you can see this is how you wanna orient them in order to get maximum support yeah it's looking good so right now we're just putting some of the paver base between the t-totes and the cinder blocks and that's going to make a nice smooth soft surface for them to sit on some of you guys might be wondering how to cut these pvc pipes so what you want to do is make your measurement and then with a strip of paper or cardboard just wrap it around the pipe and trace it out now for cutting it i've been using this hacksaw but the ideal thing to use is going to be a fine-tooth handsaw like the one you see over here you may notice that the ends are going to be a little rough so i just take a little sandpaper and just smooth it down before i started this project it was very confusing trying to figure out which pipes and which fittings i can use for this system i watched countless youtube videos and in many of them they didn't tell you the names of the parts or where you could find them in the store so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take you through each part of the system i'm going to label the pipes the fittings and in the description below i'm going to show you where you can find them in the store the first part is a flexus spout which can easily be adjusted to direct water into your system and that's going to be followed by the leaf eater this is going to filter out your leaves and branches the next thing i got was the first flush diverter kit the top is going to be the diverter t and that's going to be connected to a three inch pvc pipe that is not included and that will be cut to your specifications that's going to connect to the second half of the first flush diverter which is going to be connected to a 3 inch pvc pipe as well as an elbow now these parts i just added so i could have it curve and go off to the side but they are not necessary for your system moving back to the top we start off with a three inch to two inch pvc reducer bushing that's going to convert to three inch pipe to the two inch pipe which is all we need for the water tank on top of the system we have the two inch pvc pipes and they're going to be connected to this 90 degree elbow the sanitary tee as well as the male adapter inside there's a nylon filter the male adapter screws into a specially purchased ibc cap which has a two inch threaded plug in the front we have the female adapter socket and the two inch pvc pipe that's going to be screwed into both tanks then the separate pipe attachment is going to include the 2 inch pvc t socket followed by the 2 inch pipe and the coupler and then the 2 inch to 3 4 inch reducer that's going to allow us to screw in the 3 4 inch hex nipple followed by a threaded ball valve and the garden hose adapter which can go to a garden hose and it can also be connected to a pump and a drip irrigation system on the left side we have the one inch threaded ball valve followed by the 1 inch hex nipple and the 2 inch to the 1 inch reducer bushing the coupler and a piece of 2 inch pvc pipe for my overflow i have a two inch pipe connected to an elbow and another two inch pipe but it will vary depending on where you direct your overflow system another part which i included which is totally optional is the tank gauge level indicator this is going to let you know how much water is in each of the tanks since both of them fill up equally when it comes to attaching the pipes together you only want to cement the pipes that are under pressure that's going to be the pipe assembly in front of the system as well as the bottom sections of the first flush diverter the areas at the top are under low pressure and do not need cement plus you want to be able to take apart the top pipes to clean or replace the nylon filter when it gets dirty so now let's show you how to apply the cement so the first step is going to be applying the primer so you just want to put a light coat in here just like that and then you want to put a light coat around the pipe the outside of the pipe the same thickness as the one you did inside the connector just let these dry for about 10 seconds and then you're going to use the cement so next you're going to apply the cement to the outside make sure it's an even layer then you're going to apply a light coat to the inside of the fitting then quickly before it dries you're going to connect these together with a slight twist that twist is just going to ensure that you have a good connection and apply pressure for about 30 seconds whenever you're attaching these brass adapters to the pvc you want to use the teflon tape so i just wrapped it around here a few times and then you're just going to screw on your faucet and that's going to prevent it from leaking all right so right now we're putting up the rain gutter this is about how many feet is this marked like 20 20 i think 20 feet and so it has about a 2 inch pitch the the far side is 2 inches higher than this side so when it rains it'll go down a little bit of the incline and then it'll go through here and into the system the rain water goes down this flex spout where it feeds into this filter called the leaf eater and this is going to collect any large leaves and branches and keep it from going into the first flush diverter now as you can imagine the first flush of water can contain bacteria heavy metals bird poop and all sorts of nasty stuff so instead of having that water flow into the system we want to divert it into this chamber this is called the first flush diverter and so the pollutants from the first flush of water are going to enter in here and it goes all the way down to the bottom and as this chamber starts to fill up there's a light plastic ball inside that will move along with it and when it hits the top it's going to block this chamber and seal in the polluted water so all the subsequent clean water is going to be diverted and go through this pipe where it enters the system and when the storm is over the chamber will slowly empty leaving it ready for the next rainstorm in addition to the leaf eater and the first flush diverter i make a filter using pantyhose i just cut one of the ends and stick it in and i just put it in this hole and then you just reattach the system here in the u.s most of the ibc totes come with a npt threading and that's great because you can take something like this which i got at the hardware store this is a two inch female adapter and i'm just going to screw it on one thing that's important to mention is that you want to make sure that these pieces are on first because you have to screw them on afterwards you can take the pre-assembled pipe add the cement to each end and then just stick it into the system the way this system works is that both of these tanks are open and they're connected with this pipe so when this tank fills up the water enters this pipe and they both fill up together one thing to keep in mind is that these tanks are never empty they're either filled up with air or they're filled up with water so you want to make sure that the caps on the top are slightly loosened so that'll allow the air to leave the tank when the water fills up once the tanks are filled the additional water is going to come up here and move through this pipe this is called the overflow the water from the overflow can go to a pond a banana circle or a rain garden so we just got a rainstorm so now it's time to test out the faucet look at that fresh clean water i want to thank you guys for watching this video now you guys have the power to build a rainwater catchment system of your own well if you want to see more videos like this make sure to subscribe and share with all your friends take care and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Nature Hacker

Views: 345,321

Keywords: permaculture, nature hacker, food forest, regenerative, regenerate agriculture, gardening, organic gardening, KNF, korean natural farming, farming, probiotics, prebiotics, food not lawns, food, cooking, pest control, urban gardening, urban survivalist, recipes, survivalist

Id: sBB9oqiVQw0

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 04 2019