Our Rain Water Harvesting System

good morning YouTube we are over here at the back of the house I'm going to show you guys the water tanks I promise in the last video that I would do a video on the water tanks so here it is so I have five water tanks here um they're each 275 gallons and I have this um they look like your normal IBC totes um but I have this this black cover that I got off Amazon on each one to help eliminate algae and stuff like that um but it connects off this side of the house and that side of the house so since this side is done we'll talk about this side so everything comes off the roof down through this gutter and then the first form of filtration is this leaf eater that I have here which I'll go up on the ladder and show you guys all right so don't mind all the bugs they're attracted by this light at night so anything that's big that comes off the roof will go won't go through this so all that big stuff will get caught the water will continue to go down and the water will go down in here now the reason it goes from three inch to a two inch is because there is a ball that is in here it's a ball that floats on top of water so its purpose of the ball is to trap all the dirty water that comes off the roof which is considered the first flush all right when it first starts raining all the water that rushes off the roof in all the big debris that falls out that's your first form of filtration my second form of filtration is this first flush system all the water that comes off the very first flush of water that comes off the roof is going to get trapped in this three inch pipe right here because the ball sits on the bottom right now because it's empty as you can see there's a slow drip all that dirty water is going to end up leaking out so as the rain water falls off the roof or Cascades off the roof down into this pipe the ball that's inside is going to rise and rise and rise and Rise until it hits this two inch pipe and it's going to get stuck there this is going to be full with that first flush of water it's going to be the dirtiest water anything that's off in the on the roof or in the gutter is all going to get caught in here or at least a majority of it is all going to get caught in here the ball is going to get stuck there and so all the clean water clean water that comes off the roof is then going to come down these pipes and it's going to then go into the first tote now if it's raining very heavily and there's a lot of water coming down so a lot of some of the water will spill off and then go into the second one and then same from the other side so this one's going to get filled first along with that one so it's going to fill from the outside to the center outside to the center is going to get filled first um so when this one is full the water is not going to have anywhere to go in it so it's going to flow down the pipe and then go into this one when this one is full it's going to flow down into this pipe and start filling up this one and these two are not going to fill up as much as as fast as these two are because this gutter is one whole gutter for this whole length of house it's like 160 something feet it's one whole gutter so this whole side of the house is connected to this gutter there is not a downspout on that side but there is an opening but barely any water ever goes out of it so there's not a hole there used to be a giant ass hole right here from the water that was coming and just splashing down into the ground I filled it in after taking from these holes over here so a lot more water comes down this side than it does on that side because there's an arch in the middle of the house so only half of that roof actually comes out this way so I suspect these two will fill up before these two are full and I plan on putting a gauge inside the middle tank to let me know when the middle tank how full the middle take is because if the middle tank is full then that means all the tanks are basically full which means the water is going to come out of here which this is not done okay this is going to have a 90 degree elbow and another 90 degree elbow so that faces down and it's going to be a three inch pipe that comes down to the ground and I'm going to end up building a trench and a three inch pipe is going to have another 90 degree elbow sitting on the ground under the level of the ground and then just gonna be a three inch pipe going all the way down until there's a a um trench that goes across the property and then goes all the way down the fence line and the fence is on this side of the trench so I'm gonna have that pipe Underground for the Overflow water so when it comes to this side I'm not done yet so as you can see there's the arch so only this much of the roof is the water from this much of the roof is actually going to be coming down this way so it's not going to get as much water as the other side this side is not done um I am missing a couple things so just like the other side this is where the two inch pipe is going to start and it's going to go back into a three inch but I am missing the bottom piece that allows the water to drip out and then I also need to get like a um a plastic ball to go inside so that's the only part over here I need to do because right now water is just sitting in this cap in this pipe um so I'm going to have to open this pipe at some point to get all that water that's in there out um because I don't want to create a fastening ground for bugs so those are the two things I need to fix this is where I took the dirt to fill in that hole on the other side and then there's one other problem that I've been having with these IBC totes is that I'm not able to find adapters that actually fit my totes so that so that one's full or not full it's got water in it that's nice so it must have rained enough that this one might be full and that one has water in it let's see if the third one has water in it sorry I'm kind of rambling right now all right so the third one does not have any water yet that's not bad okay so anyway back to my I've been having trouble finding adapters that screw on here so I can like attach a hose or even P PVC piping this one is a different one it's got a different opening to it so I was actually able to find an adapter that fits this one and so I was able to get this PVC on it so I'm able to get like a five gallon bucket put a five gallon bucket under this and be able to fill that up um or I can get the adapter that has the hose nozzle and I can connect a hose to this one and then I can use it to water in the plants in the front yard but I have one two three four IBC totes that sorry three just three because this one I can get an adapter on I have three totes that I can't seem to find an adapter that actually fits that's been the biggest thing um some of them are just made different I guess um I did see some on Amazon that I'm actually going to try because those are two inch and there's these all supposed to have two inch openings but a two inch does not fit on these three totes so I found a two and three quarters on Amazon adapter so I'm going to order those and try those out because if they don't fit I can just always send them back to Amazon so that's going to be my next step is getting those to see if I can actually get an adapter on these otherwise I just comes out I'd like to actually have some control over the water and how it comes out let's see if there's water in this one yep so there's water in the first two on this side first two on the side but not in the third yet so what I'm gonna do is actually open up the floodgates on these two because they've been sitting empty for a year now so I'm pretty sure they got some bugs and stuff in it so we're gonna let it do kind of a clean wash [Applause] there you go hopefully that anything that was sitting on the bottom of these totes came out let's do it with this one too look at that this one has a lot of water pressure in it all right there we go so hopefully anything that was sitting on the bottom of that tote came out I've already done a flush on the first two um when it rained a couple days ago and I've been able to fill up my chicken's Waters using this water here instead of using the hose so I'm no longer having to use a hose which is going to be nice especially when I start doing all my gardening out here I'm never going to have to use a hose connected to city water I'm going to have all of these which is 1 375 gallons of water and there's no way I'm going to go through that mount so I definitely have to get this overflow connected and get that going and so all of these are sitting on cinder blocks I wanted them up off the ground because like I said I want to be able to get a five gallon bucket under them plus the higher they are the more water pressure I'm gonna have when I connect a hose to them I'm already going to have water pressure as it is but the higher they are the more water pressure as well so really excited about this it's only taken me a year and it took my dad coming over my mom had covid so my mom kicked him out of the house um so he came over and we were able to knock all this out in basically a day I had all the pieces already for a year now and it just took my dad coming and just saying let's get this done and we finally got it done so only took a year let's see how long it takes me to build this fence now if it took me a year just to hook all this up I Can Only Imagine so yeah um wish I could show you guys like all the pieces that I got um but these are all extra or things I need to take back like that was a missed buy um I never used this I gotta take that back I got some odd ends this is a two inch adapter that I got hoping it would fit it didn't fit so I got a three inch thinking that would fit that was too big so and then these are supposed to go between every tote so that I can do um because none of this is glued together none of it's glued there's only a couple spots where there is silicone where it leaked but that's only a couple spots but this was supposed to go between each tote for a quick release so I can unscrew it and be able to redo any of this if I wanted to but you'll notice there's not one between here this one was supposed to go between there but I didn't realize when I bought it that this one was a um twist like you have to twist into it all the other ones were not they were just open like this so this one has to go back and either I get a replace where both sides are smooth so I can put it between there or I just leave it um I mean it's an easy fix I can easily take all that apart but I don't really want to but it would be an easy fix so that's another piece that has to go back and then I got a bunch of other stuff down here this is the 90 degree that's going to go on top of the Overflow over there so that's going to be what goes towards the ground um this is a piece that messed up this is the um the gauge that's going to go into the third one so what you do is I'm gonna dig a hole or drill a hole to put that in basically like right there and what you do is you drop it to the bottom and then you fix the arrow so the arrow that's empty you would fix it to where that gauge is and then what you would do next is grab the phone all right so I'd pull up the string and this gauge changes so what I would do then is figure out where this gauge goes when it's full of water so that would tell me um how much water is in this third tote because that's the one that's going to get filled up last and then I will be able to figure out how much water is in here how much I'm actually collecting because so far if the water is in these second ones I'm assuming that's big that means that the first ones are full so I have 275 gallons in that one and 275 gallons in that one so I'm not sure his how much is in the second ones but if I get this third one set up with this gauge that lets me know how much water is in it then I'll be able to tell how much water I'm collecting not that you know it really matters but it's something I just want to know um there's a couple places I've gotten things from so rain harvesting by Blue Mountain company is where I've gotten a lot of my stuff so let's see these are the eight steps to rain harvesting and this kind of shows you how you want it all laid out here's your first flush system with your overflow and the water that actually goes through the tank and all that I watched a lot of videos countless countless hours on how to get this set up um but I did it my way and it works to how it's supposed to work any big debris falls off dirty water gets caught in here and then this nozzle is a slow drip so the slow drip of water will come out here so all the dirty water that's caught in here will slowly drip out of here and then this is a twist so if there's any debris in here I can twist this off clean out this pipe make sure all that Gunk is out of there put the ball back in because the ball will fall out close it back up for the next rainfall and then it's all cleaned out clean water goes into here so you guys saw the water that was coming out of these tanks was clear it's nice um I love these black covers that go on them but what sucks the most about them is that they cover the whole tank so I can't really see where the water level is at so I would have to buy five of those gauges to figure out so that's the only downside about the black is that I can't actually see in the totes but you want them black because you don't want algae in there especially if you're going to be feeding this stuff to my chickens whatever other animals I use and then use to water plants you don't want it dirty that is my rainwater harvesting um set up I'm really happy that it's finally done well at least 98 done I still have to finish the first flush system on the other side and actually get an overflow going but other than that it's done it's it's works it collects water it collects the rain which is the point of it so that I don't have to use city water Ergo my water bill is less um so yeah really happy with it uh thank you guys for watching this video and you have any questions um Post in the comments and I'll try to answer every question you guys have y'all have a great day

Channel: Shull Family Homestead

Views: 6,770

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Id: 46CT-bwJo7s

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023