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A Medium Sized Rain Water Collection
System -- Water Delivery
Water Delivery
The water delivery system takes water from a penetration near the bottom of
the tank, and routes it via 1 inch diameter PVC pipe to a small pump that is
used to pump it over the garden area using a regular garden hose.
As the picture shows, the bulkhead fitting going through
the tanks wall, and the 1 inch outlet line hooking up to the bulkhead fitting
via a reducer to take it down to 1 inch. A shutoff valve (the only one) is
provided here near the tank to turn the water off.
The bulkhead fitting came already installed on the tank,
which is a good thing as it would have been a pain to add. So, order your
tank with the fittings you want. The "manhole" in the top of the tank
would allow a VERY skinny man to get down into the tank and do the installation
from the inside, but not much fun.
If you do add your own outlet hole, keep it up off the
bottom of the tank a little as it might tend to fill with sediment if not.
We decided to use a small pump to get a better flow rate
at the garden end of the outlet pipe. I think that when the tank is full
it might do OK without a pump, but its going to get very slow as the tank
empties.
The pump we used is an inexpensive
Wel-Bilt from Northern Tool It says that its a half horsepower, has 110 ft
of output head, and will pump 720 gpm. I've not confirmed these specs, but it
does nicely for watering the vegetables. The pump is not
self-priming, so the pump must be located so that the case fills with water from
the tank by gravity. The inlet and outlet fittings are standard 1 inch
pipe thread and work fine with PVC pipe to threaded adaptors.
The pump price was about $50.
This is certainly not a deluxe pump, but the reviews were good and it seemed like
a good way to start in that we were not that sure about exactly what we wanted.
So far it has worked fine.
The pump is hooked up to the 1 inch PVC line from the
tank using the type of PVC union that can be coupled or uncoupled by hand.
This will allow us to use the pump in other places and to keep the pump inside
for the winter. The union has an O ring and should be good for quite a few
coupling and decoupling. The pump inlet and outlet fittings are standard
1 inch threaded fittings and adapt easily to the PVC pipe.
On the outlet side, we used a PVC elbow to get the flow
in the right direction, and then used an adaptor to go from the standard pipe
thread to a garden hose thread.
We positioned the pump close enough to the garden so that
one regular length of garden hose would easily reach all of the garden and the
nearby trees. This is why the pump is located a ways away from the tank.
The pump is installed in this little plywood shelter to
keep the rain off it. Its very quick to hook up and remove with the
union fitting. The 1 inch PVC lines comes directly from the tank outlet,
and the grey garden hose goes over to the garden for watering.
I added an electrical outlet on the outside of the shop to plug the
pump into without an extension cord, but it works fine on an extension cord as
well.
Pretty simple.
Go on to installing the water overflow system...
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Comments or questions...?
Gary July 5, 2011
