The Ultimate Rain Barrel Irrigation System

hi i'm tom coming to you from the don't screw it up world headquarters and workshop in cleveland ohio cleveland is also the home of the rock and roll hall of fame i'm wearing the hat to prove it today i am going to show you one of my greatest inventions of all time this is the ultimate rain barrel irrigation system i devised this system over 10 years of trial and error and today i'm going to share with you everything i know about rain water collection and irrigation i'll give you a high level overview of the system and then i'll talk you through all the details first this system consists of four primary parts part one is rainwater collection i have two 75 gallon rain barrels that's 150 gallons together that's 568 liters for the 175 countries that use the metric system unlike the one i live in i collect water off the roof of this workshop it comes down to my downspout through a seasonal diverter so i can turn it on in the summer off in the winter fills up one rain barrel when that one fills up goes to the second rain barrel when that one fills up goes into an overflow which goes through the downspout into my storm drain that's my rainwater collection part one part two is the pump system i need to get water from the back of my shop here out to my garden which is in the front of my shop i do that through an electric pump this is set up to deliver essentially hose water pressure to my garden irrigation system this is an ac powered pump you could also convert this to runoff of dc power and run this as a solar powered system part three is the irrigation the pump basically goes through an underground system out to my garden the key thing about this is the filtration system i run a micro drip irrigation system in my gardens and you need to filter the water if you're using rainwater to ensure that it doesn't plug up your system so i have a two-part filtration system that i'll show you and i also have a very important feature which is an automatic shut off so that when both the rain barrels get down to the bottom the system will shut down to make sure that all the sediment in the bottom of the rain barrels does not go through the pump system or the irrigation system very important feature and then the last feature part four which is completely mind-blowing is i have a backup system so my rain barrels will collect about four days worth of water for irrigating my garden what if it doesn't rain for five days what if it doesn't rain for six days am i not gonna water my garden or am i gonna drag out a hose with one of those dumb sprinklers that goes like this or am i gonna hand water my plants not around here this system is fully automated hands-free if i don't get rain for five days i use my house water system i have a hose back up hooked up to the rain barrel automatically kicks on fills the rain barrels back up with hose water keeps the whole system running hands-free this thing is amazing let's talk about it in detail i'll show you how it works now before we get started the first thing i want to talk about is the highest priority here in the adult screwed up workshop and that's your safety now this job can be incredibly dangerous because it mixes electricity and water which if you get between those two things it can kill you so don't screw around with this job if you don't know what you're doing this can be incredibly dangerous if you're using an ac pump out in a wet location i have this set up with the gfci circuit breaker i have weatherproof electrical connections i got an automatic kill switch if you don't know what any of that stuff means don't do this job hire a professional to do this because this can be really dangerous so i've included this diagram which includes all the components of the entire system i'm not going to go through all these on this chart because i'm going to show you the actual parts in the video but if you want to rewind and look at this the left-hand portion of this chart is the rain water collection system the bottom portion is the pump the right-hand area is the irrigation system and then towards the center there is the hose water backup system so feel free to rewind and look at this chart if you need to consult any of these details as we go here's where the whole system starts i collect water off of the roof it comes down my downspout and then you want to have what i call a seasonal diverter this is a diverter basically in this position sends the water down this line into the downspout in the summer in the winter i throw that lever it shuts this one off sends it back down here through its normal path into my downspout to my storm drain so you're having a seasonal diverter lets you turn off the system in the winter so that you're not having water go into these and freezing up if you live in the type of climate where i live you can ignore this black pipe for now i'm going to come back and discuss this later now the way these double barrel systems usually work is the water comes down through the downspout through my screen fills up the first barrel when it gets almost the top of this one it goes through this connector hose so it will fill this barrel go to the second barrel and then it'll fill the second one when the second barrel fills it raises the water level of both and then there's a diverter a little bit higher in the back of this rain barrel that then takes the overflow down the back into my downspout and my storm drain so this is a completely self-running system no matter how much it rains if these barrels fill up it just goes through the overflow back into the downspout you don't have to worry about these things overflowing the next feature is the stands that i put the rain barrels on i built these originally because i was under the impression that if i just raised these up off the ground i could get enough hose pressure by giving some height here that i wouldn't have to use a pump that doesn't work i'm going to show you an example of why not but these stands really work i made these out of 4x4 landscaping timbers if you just want to get your rain barrels up off of the ground which i recommend the next feature is the mixing valve so now when i want to take the water out of the rain barrels and run it through my pump and get it into the garden you got to figure out how do you get the water out of both barrels do you take it out of one barrel first and then figure out how to get it out of the second one this is really a very simple gravity-based system so i just use one of these mixing hoses you'll find these like for washing machines and things of that nature where it basically takes two hoses and combines them into one this thing goes through a shut off valve a filter which i'll come back to in detail that goes into my pump so when i open this valve up basically gravity drains the water out of the rain barrels through this uh mixing valve through my filter and it will drain both barrels at exactly the same time it's just a gravity-based system and so when i'm ready to pull the water out of the rain barrels it comes down through my mixing hose here then i open this here comes your flow that's how the water comes out and another feature of this is that all my connections i use these quick connect uh hose connectors here so no threading things on and off so when i want to take this apart clean it winterize it whatever boom there it is i just made the connection turn the water on there it is no leaks i mean this thing's awesome down here below the barrels is my pump i have a little pump housing that i built down there i'm going to pull this out and put it on my bench in the shop so i can show you that part in more detail so here's the pump that i use this is just in a little pump housing that i built this is a 110 volt on demand pump so as soon as it senses that drop in water pressure when you squeeze the hose nozzle or when the irrigation timer kicks on it senses that drop in pressure on the outbound side it'll automatically kick this pump on so it's on demand pump this one is rated at 45 psi which is roughly hose pressure you can buy these at your local farm supply stores order these online they're pretty common and then you can see on the outbound sides i always use these quick connect uh hose attachments so it's really easy to make repairs on this to clean everything out to winterize it take it apart strongly recommend the quick connect hoses so you're not in there using pliers and things so here's an example of how an on-demand pump works so i have the pump it's in the powered on position i have my four pounds of pressure coming out of the rain barrel here just for my gravity feed and then over here i have my makeshift version of my garden irrigation system eight o'clock in the morning that timer clicks on opens the valve starts watering and as the water pressure that was in the line starts to draw the pump just kicked on you can hear it running now so the pump's running it's drawing the gravity feed from the rain barrel system that's going through the underground lines then the timer shuts off in the garden it briefly repressurizes that line going out to the garden and they're just clicked off so that's how an on-demand pump works so here's the assembled pump housing i just made this out of pressure treated wood just to keep the elements from raining down on top of this somewhat protected but i also want to keep it open because the pump can give off some heat when it runs for a long time so i want to have some airflow in there as well it's just a basic pump housing now i initially thought when i first set this up that i could just hook a garden hose up to this and this would run my irrigation system out in the garden you just don't get a lot of pressure off of this so when i first set the system up i thought i could just run some kind of gravity-based system i raised them up on those platforms to give me a little extra water pressure because height equals pressure i ran that mixing valve so i got both the barrels coming into one hose i hooked it up to my hose nozzle i go out to my garden there it is that's what you get then you might be asking the question i asked what if you get a little lower do you get a little more pressure a little more go a little lower get a little more pressure a little lower i'm doing the limbo here a little lower that's it right there that's the maximum water pressure you're gonna get out of a gravity-based system i'm just here to tell you it's not gonna get the job done i put my flow pressure meter on here just in case you don't believe me i barely move the needle that's uh looks like about four pounds pressure let me lower it down a little more it's right at four pounds that's the maximum out of a gravity-based system you're just not gonna get the job done with that hose pressure is 40 to 60 pounds per square inch uh this is four it's just not going to get it there so just bite the bullet and use a pump i mean that's the conclusion i came to gravity-based systems for what i'm trying to do here just isn't effective so when you think about your pump system you don't want your rain barrels to go completely dry for two reasons one is if they go to the bottom any sediment that is in there is going to go down through the pump and that can diminish the life of your pump and it can pump through your irrigation system and really plug up the system so you never want the rain barrels to go completely dry second reason is that you don't want the pump to run when the rain barrels are dry because this pump is running from on an on-demand basis it's sensing the demand on the other side of the pump it doesn't know if there's water coming through it or not so once the rain barrel runs dry there's no pressure on the other side there's no pressure on this side the pump's just going to keep running it'll burn itself out so you have to have a way to shut the pump off when the rain barrels get low so the way that i do that is by using something called a float switch now this is the brains of the operation this was probably invented shortly after thomas edison discovered electricity or maybe thomas edison invented the float switch after nikola tesla discovered electricity i'm not really sure but the way this works is basically hooked up to an electrical plug a through plug with a male uh plug on one side and a female plug on the other side and it works like a light switch but it floats that's why it's called the float switch so the float switch floats and it controls the power to the pump so when the rain barrel is full this thing floats it's in the up position it's on just like a light switch the pump starts running it's irrigating the garden it's going down down down down down the level's going down down down click it gets to the bottom and it turns the power off when it's in this down position so when the water level gets low before it gets to the bottom it's going to kill the power shut the pump off so that keeps the pump from burning out and it keeps the rain barrel from running dry then it starts raining water comes down the downspout fills up the barrels fills up this barrel starts to go back up float float floats back up clicks into the on position the pump is powered back on now waiting for the irrigation timer in the garden to turn on so this is a great system this is like one of the most simple things imaginable but this is really the brains of the operation another important part of the system is the filtration system if you're using a pump and an irrigation system you don't want sediment to go through your pump because that'll deteriorate the life of your pump and you definitely don't want sediment getting into your irrigation system if you use something like a micro drip irrigation system because it'll start to plug up your system so the first line of defense against getting sediment in your lines is to have a screen on top of your rain barrel these are the screens that come with it this kind of comes with the barrel it blocks out the big sediment that would come down but this is kind of like using a chain link fence to screen out your rain water this isn't very fine so what i've done is i've added a secondary filter here this is a super fine stainless steel screening the type that you would see on the leaf guard uh gutter guards um so this keeps all the sediment out i mean that catches everything so i got the you know chain link fence version sitting on the top not catching much i got the real deal down here this catches all the fine sediment so i mentioned the first part of the filtration system is the screen that's where you want to try to keep as much debris out of your rain barrels as possible but then i also have a secondary filtration system here where this is a filter that comes usually with drip irrigation systems and normally this would be out in your garden right before you go through the drip irrigation i just took the filter and moved it way upstream in the process here so this is my micro filtration system before it goes through my pump before it goes through the underground line and then i don't need a filtration system in the garden because i moved it upstream here so let me show you how this works i turn the water off here with my little handy lever on my mixing valve if you open this bad boy up just unscrews like this there's a little screen in here you just run this under the hose this is pretty clean right now but i clean this out maybe once every two weeks or so because i have the micro uh screen up on the top i don't get a lot of sediment coming out of here and once you get sediment in your system that's a real pain because then you got to be maintaining this thing all the time clean that out sorry clean screw it back on that's my entire maintenance of this system that's really all i need to do to this this thing runs and runs and runs the only thing i do is clean out this filter like i said i do it once every week or two turn my water back on that's ready to go and then over here i have my underground irrigation line that goes out here around the shop out to my garden i'll show you that in a minute this is where the pump water comes through this black hose into my underground line out to the garden so another reason another feature is the reason that i put this connection here instead of out by the garden is because i have the option to run the whole system off the hose water if i don't want to use the rain barrels at all i can just connect my underground line directly to my hose water and bypass the whole rain barrel system if i want to do that some people would say you know that's kind of over engineering but the reason that i do that is because occasionally early in the season i might want to get the irrigation up and running before i have time to clean out the rain barrels and get the whole system set up with the spring maintenance and the other reason is because like today i gotta do maintenance on my pump uh so i gotta disassemble the whole thing for a day if it's gonna take me more than one day to do that i could just hook this up to that hose water and just run the whole system off of hose water some people call it over engineering i call it you know thinking ahead okay we're getting close to where the action happens now i'm in the garden so this is really where it all starts this is my garden timer i have my underground line so coming out of the rain barrel goes through the pump pump goes underground comes up through this black line here and then this is my irrigation timer so i have this set to run for one hour a day right now it's running at eight am for one hour so when this clicks on at eight am it opens this line it starts to draw that pressure and the on-demand pump immediately feels that pressure drop and the pump kicks on starts pumping the rain barrel pumping the rain water through the whole system so when this clicks on i can do it manually here uh eight o'clock in the morning you're gonna hear this thing go there it is just clicked on pump just kicked on i got rain water pumping through my garden here and this is where the magic happens the rain water starts coming through my micro drip irrigation system drip drip drip drips that rain water right on the base of each plant so i'm not watering weeds i'm not wasting water i'm not spraying water everywhere going directly from my rain barrel through the underground system through the timer drip drip drip right at the base of each plant that's how you want it to work so the whole system was working fine but i still had one problem i couldn't control the weather so i was on the road all the time i'd be traveling and like i said the barrels fill up about four days worth of irrigation i'd be on the road i'd be looking at my phone saying it hasn't rained in four days hasn't rained in five days hasn't rained in six days i know that the float switch turned the pump off so at least the pump's not running dry but my tomato plants aren't getting watered when the barrels run dry so then i'm thinking i gotta figure out some way to have a backup system to water the plants when the barrels run dry so i'm thinking of all these crazy ideas where i can set up some kind of wi-fi controller to my hose and have a second system out there where i can turn on a sprinkler through wi-fi and then it came to me just like on the wizard of oz the answer was in front of me the whole time it was right in front of my eyes it's right here i got my super computer sitting right here i got my float switch the float switch knows when the barrels are empty so all i had to do is figure out when the barrels are empty and the float switch knows it i just got to turn on the hose it's all right here so i knew that i could buy an electric solenoid valve that when this goes into the off position it would turn on the hose water but then i'm thinking how do i get the hose water out to the garden so i'm thinking i got to run a whole separate set of hoses out there i gotta have a separate sprinkler system and then i just step back and i realize it's all right here it's all right in front of my eyes all i need to do is get the hose water into the barrel the rain barrels don't know if it's hose water or rain water the pump doesn't know if it's hose water or rain water the irrigation system doesn't know the difference my tomato plants probably know the difference between hose water and rain water but don't tell them so i got the whole system right here so here's how it works the rain barrels are full it runs for one days two days three days four days it's getting dry there's no rain in the forecast it's looking like a drought the barrels are empty boom there it is barrel's empty kicks on my hose water the hose water fills up the first barrel comes over the connector fills up the second barrel fills it back up back up back up back up fills it up fills it up boom there it is my rain barrel's full the system's back in action the pump's ready to go this system's so ingenious i can barely believe i came up with it so the other part that i needed to make this whole system work was something i was aware of called a solenoid valve here's a picture of the one that i'm using it's basically a hose threaded input a hose threaded output and an electric controller on the top that controls a gate valve inside so when this is powered it's in the closed position because that's when my pump's running and i don't want the backfill working and then when i turn the power off that's when my float switch goes down it opens the valve and turns the backfill hose on this is my hose water backup so i leave this open at all times the only time i close this valve is in the winter so i always have hose pressure going into that solenoid valve that's going to open when the rain barrels get low so that's my backup hose pressure now if you don't know anything about electricity you definitely want to have an electrician do this part of the work but basically what i have here is i have power coming off of my circuit breaker inside this is a master kill switch so every time i come out here when i start doing maintenance even cleaning out my filter doing anything with this i turn the whole system off i just click that off shuts the whole system off shuts the electricity off because you don't want to mix electricity and water unless you want to meet your maker sooner than you're supposed to so i shut the whole thing down so that's my kill switch the second thing i have here is my power for the pump and for the solenoid that runs the back up hose water system so the way this works [Music] is this plug goes to my pump and the solenoid so if i just plug this in the pump power will be on and the solenoid will be in the closed position this little plug that basically is a through plug has a plug on both sides like that a male on one side a female on the other this is for the float switch so you just put this in here in series and the float switch is like a switch that turns the power on and off for the pump and the solenoid so my outlet is always on but then my float switch controls that based on the height of the water so when the water is high it powers the pump and the solenoid so my pump is on demand that's ready to go the solenoid is closed so my hose backup isn't working when that float switch goes down clicks down boom it turns this switch off which kills the power to my pump so it stops running the pump and it kills the power to the solenoid which turns it into the open position so now you see the whole thing it's a continuously running system it never stops i don't have to do anything with it i turn it on in the spring it runs until i turn it off in the fall this thing's incredible so here's the last feature this little mister you're probably like what's the mystery all about is when i'm sitting in my house having my coffee and i'm wondering is the irrigation system actually working i don't want to come out and check it every day so i just look out the window while i'm drinking my coffee and i can see the mister and i know it's working it's always working so thanks for selecting this video i hope you found it helpful i believe this is the ultimate rain barrel and irrigation setup it's the best one i've ever seen good luck with your next project don't screw it up you

Channel: Don't Screw It Up

Views: 17,072

Rating: 4.9165215 out of 5

Keywords: Rain Barrel, tom, cucuzza, cleveland, backup system, ultimate rain barrel, irrigation, drip irrigation, micro drip, garden watering, garden, vegetable watering, system, on demand, pump, rain water, rainwater, barrels, watering, automated, tutorial, best, in the world, don't screw it up, pump system, setup, two barrels, overflow, how to set up, how to, electric pump

Id: BU2eROdhC9c

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020