Stormwater retention

In an effort to be as "green" as possible, Daniel constructed this stormwater retention system out of barrels donated by LifeRoads church. We purchased gutters and a few plumbing parts and Voila! - free (almost) irrigation. The building has a huge flat roof so we are able to divert the water into these drums. The pressure isn't fantastic but it works (maybe sometime one of our volunteers will come up with a sump pump system that will give us better pressure).

After the first rainfall we realized that 150 gallons doesn't take long to fill up. We purchased 2 additional tanks that hold 275 gallons of water each (total 700 gallons). Daniel re-routed the gutter system so half the roof flows into those tanks and the rest into the smaller tanks. The thought is we will fill the tanks during a good rain and then use the blue tanks until they are empty and then the larger tanks as our back up.

Of course it took 3 weeks after we installed the new tanks before it actually rained again but we can always go back to to the very expensive city water when all else fails.