Allen: Sean Hartley is an expert when it comes to looking for ways to conserve water and I was able to ask him to explain how the system I am going to use here at the garden home retreat will work. But Sean sounds like he is already under way.
Shawn: Yes Allen we are just getting started.
Allen: What is the red line here or the pink one?
Shawn: Well, the redline is the outline of the excavation. It is the excavation footprint. And so that is about two to three feet larger than actual system size.
Allen: How deep will they go with this hole to, when they set it in?
Shawn: Well you have about 6000 gallons of storage in this specific cistern and so this hole will go down about six feet. The actual cistern with four feet and I have two feet of cover on top.
Allen: Okay, so they will put top soil, two feet of top soil over the top.
Shawn: Excellent grow and medium for you to say along.
Allen: Lovely. Now, the actual cistern itself is made out of these plastic blocks.
Shawn: Yes I have got a couple of samples over here. Do you want to take a look?
Allen: I sure would, that would be great.
Shawn: If you could make macaroni in teas you can put together these rank tanks. You see in here is a sum on a single unit and he started with the rectangular unit. There is only two pieces, you have the rectangular unit and then you have the square pieces. The rank tank piece comes in five different sizes. If you will, you have got a single, you have a double, you have a triple, you have a quad, and then you have a pet unit. For these specific projects, we did so like the triple unit because it maximizes the storage capacity with the available area that we have.
Allen: Shawn, when I see these systems really it took right here, you see there is an insurance policy for my garden, because whether patterns these days seems so unpredictable.
Shawn: And that is exactly why you want to rain hard with some systems because you want to capture, you want to bank the water when it is not raining and so when it is raining you store it and when it is not raining you use the water. And in a typical year on your property here you may capture as much as half a million gallons of water.
Allen: Half a million?
Shawn: That is like the size of two Olympic swimming pools. That is a lot of water.
Allen: Yes having it. So with the hole under way, what is the next step?
Shawn: Well the next step, we are going to complete the hole and then we set the tank. Once the tank is set, we backfill and then after backfilling, it’s time to connect all the downspouts. We will put in the basket filters and then you are ready to start collecting rain.
Allen: Hey, that is so exciting. I cannot tell you how brilliant it is to do rainwater harvesting here and take care of this garden in a very responsible way.
Shawn: it is a very exciting opportunity, you are ahead of most people and that you have thought about this at the ground level. It could design stage and now you are able to reap towards of rain water harvesting.
Allen: If you would like more information on this topic or any other gardening topics just check out my website at pallensmith.com.
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