Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Rain Water Collection System In Peoria, Illinois

jen blog post Former Roy-Fisher landscape designer, Bill Chambers, devised a rain water collection system at his company’s, Chamber & Sons Landscaping, headquarters in Peoria, Illinois. The inspiration came when he wanted to cultivate plants but could not, due to the lack of water infrastructure on the property.

He began by purchasing two standard sized garbage cans from the local home improvement store to setup as a test system. He used PVC pipes and fittings to connect the two. One can had the downspout from the building’s roof empty into it. The test system turned out to be a success, and it was time to expand.

A local plumbing company (C.L. O’Brien Plumbing, Inc.) gave Bill several old water softener tanks to use as more rain barrels. But these aren’t standard garbage cans, these are much larger. With these new barrels the system went from a capacity of 64 gallons to 1,200+ gallons.

Bill spent several weeks perfecting the rain barrel system. He installed a lower patio for the larger barrels and individual pedestals for each of the smaller containers to make sure the control water level would fill up 100% of each barrel and utilize 100% of the water collected by each barrel. The first barrel (one of the original two garbage cans) that the downspout empties into has screen filters that the water must pass through before entering the other barrels. All the barrels are connected with PVC pipe and fittings and waterproofed using large rubber washers. He installed a hose bib to the largest barrel and a 560 GPH submersible pump resides inside the large barrel as well. A drip irrigation hose was attached to the hose bib which also has an easy to clean out filter.IMG_0128

It rained for a couple of hours on Sunday, September 20th, 2009, which was more than enough to fill the entire system to the brim.IMG_0112 The overflow is piped into the adjacent corn field.

On Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009, the first part of the drip irrigation system was installed. At first small spray heads are being used to water trays of seedlings, but eventually each plant will be given its own bubbler if need be. After the system ran for ten minutes, no noticeable change was seen in the water level of the barrels. Currently, only three spray heads and four bubblers are hooked into the system, but it should take quite some time for the water level to decrease.
Any questions or comments are greatly appreciated as this is an experimental rain collection system. Thus far it seems to be working wonderfully, but any ideas on how to improve it are greatly appreciated.

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