Bill and Kay's Excellent Adventure!!! Update 1/23/2010
Update 1/23/2010
Bill and Kay report all the rain barrels are full. They have no leaks with the multiple connections. Therefore the adventure was a success and they now have about 1,800 gallons waiting to use in their garden! Great job. Even better the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District inspected their rain barrels and processed their rebate form. The MPWMD inspector was very impressed and Bill and Kay have since received their rebate check!!
If you were at the 12/05/2009 workshop at the Monterey Regional Waste Management District on Rainwater Harvesting with focus on assembling and installing rain barrels, you might remember a section of my PowerPoint presentation I called "Bill and Kay's Excellent Adventure". Bill and Kay are the poster kids for installing rain barrels. After several presentations and lots of self education they decided they would take advantage of the free 55 gallon food grade olive barrels and recycle them into rain barrels. They started out with a few barrels and then decided to go all out! Currently they have 33 barrels featuring a string of 14 barrels and another of 15 barrels with several others in another location. Thats right, you read it correctly! Total capacity is a staggering 1,815 gallons. After the rains this past week they figure they have collected over 800 gallons to date. As of the workshop they were just finishing up the strings of barrels prior to the rain falling.
Bill and Kay have done a great job! When they decided to start this project they didn't have any gutters on their roof to collect the rainwater. They completed attaching the gutters themselves and have experimented with different downspout configurations to their barrels. Next they bought all the parts to assemble the barrels and set up a production line in their garage and backyard, cut the holes, installed the bulkhead adapters, installed the connecting hose and put every one of those 33 barrels together themselves. Wow! This is very impressive and the best news is as their barrels continue to fill during the rainy season they will have enough water collected to take care of most, if not all their irrigation needs through the summer. In addition overflow water is currently being fed passively into the yard and not down the gutter into the storm drains.
Bill and Kay have really stepped up in curtailing their municipal water usage for irrigation and taken advantage of the water that falls naturally out of the skies! Oh, I forgot to mention they are processing the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District rebate form for cistern installation which should result in a nice check of approximately $450. It pays to be water wise! Stay tuned for more updates.
Bill and Kay report all the rain barrels are full. They have no leaks with the multiple connections. Therefore the adventure was a success and they now have about 1,800 gallons waiting to use in their garden! Great job. Even better the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District inspected their rain barrels and processed their rebate form. The MPWMD inspector was very impressed and Bill and Kay have since received their rebate check!!
If you were at the 12/05/2009 workshop at the Monterey Regional Waste Management District on Rainwater Harvesting with focus on assembling and installing rain barrels, you might remember a section of my PowerPoint presentation I called "Bill and Kay's Excellent Adventure". Bill and Kay are the poster kids for installing rain barrels. After several presentations and lots of self education they decided they would take advantage of the free 55 gallon food grade olive barrels and recycle them into rain barrels. They started out with a few barrels and then decided to go all out! Currently they have 33 barrels featuring a string of 14 barrels and another of 15 barrels with several others in another location. Thats right, you read it correctly! Total capacity is a staggering 1,815 gallons. After the rains this past week they figure they have collected over 800 gallons to date. As of the workshop they were just finishing up the strings of barrels prior to the rain falling.
Bill and Kay have done a great job! When they decided to start this project they didn't have any gutters on their roof to collect the rainwater. They completed attaching the gutters themselves and have experimented with different downspout configurations to their barrels. Next they bought all the parts to assemble the barrels and set up a production line in their garage and backyard, cut the holes, installed the bulkhead adapters, installed the connecting hose and put every one of those 33 barrels together themselves. Wow! This is very impressive and the best news is as their barrels continue to fill during the rainy season they will have enough water collected to take care of most, if not all their irrigation needs through the summer. In addition overflow water is currently being fed passively into the yard and not down the gutter into the storm drains.
Bill and Kay have really stepped up in curtailing their municipal water usage for irrigation and taken advantage of the water that falls naturally out of the skies! Oh, I forgot to mention they are processing the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District rebate form for cistern installation which should result in a nice check of approximately $450. It pays to be water wise! Stay tuned for more updates.
