We're getting the cistern today for the rainwater collection.
You guys thought we were done with these little spiffy gutters? No, we're not.
We're going huge. It's Epic Gardening. It's Epic Homesteading.
5,000 gallon cistern coming at ya, now!
Dude, I got the whole thing. Like, dude,
you look so small next to it. Literally, it's insanely large.
You look so small next to it.
Right now!
Initially we thought the tank would go about 10 feet offset from this pole here.
But now I'm thinking to put it right there. So the guys are moving the mulch.
I thought that was a safe spot for mulch,
but now the mulch is going back to here and the tank might end up going right
there. Right now, Brook is measuring with a laser level.
There's the transmitter right there, the height of the scupper drain over there,
the height of the tank and then also, how much of a fall there is to here.
See how much we have to do as far as trenching and burying the tank.
Nice. Ooh, that works really well.
Closing in on the fence? Yeah. Whoa.
Nice. Ooh, nice. Okay, we're in.
So if you haven't watched the other gutter video,
you might want to watch it so you see what's changed here. But before,
we had a little elbow going into a scupper that just dropped down into the IBC
tote that was right here. So a lot has changed, as you can see.
We're going to run this gutter probably over this so it connects to the same
garage outlet right here. This is our leaf filter right here.
This is the first flush filter. So this is maybe 20ish gallons,
25 gallons or so will go through this. The rest, once this fills up,
will start diverting over to here.
It'll trench out and over to our big kahuna right there. All right,
now the trench has been both dug and covered.
So there's a piece of pipe running right there.
And where you can see this disturbed dirt, it's coming out here,
filling it up right now.
So it's going to run all the way down to right over there and it's
going to pop up and I'll show you that in a second.
But I also want to show you what's going on over here
because we're going to be doing the 500 gallon.
That's going to be next to the shed.
And it probably will also hook into the eventual chicken coop,
which will be right there. It's been a couple of days.
Brook's team has been gone. They did a fantastic job.
I want to run you through each tank and show you how it works.
So here's the first one. We can put up a shot of the before as well.
But needless to say, it's quite a bit larger. This is 200 gallons here.
The copper gutter had to get cut just slightly.
So it used to go down to about there. We cut that up.
Got a nice little expensive piece of copper right there.
The tanks are all gonna work relatively the same way as far as what's coming out
of the downspout. So you have that leaf filter.
What's cool that Brook and their team did is they actually painted the PVC.
So it somewhat matches the wall. So it kind of has a nice clean look.
So same idea here. You've got your first flush filter.
I can move this wherever I want. Move that water wherever I want,
water the gray water if I want to. And then you've got bop,
it's dropping right in. There's my spigot right there.
We put it on these little pavers so it has a nice little base.
You can access it easier. And then what's cool is the overflow,
and this one does stand a chance of overflowing,
will go into our gray water laundry bed. Remember,
right there,
that little PVC routes into the laundry system that comes in right here.
So if we ever overflow here,
we're still going to route in here and get a double passive watering.
So now we're here next to the shed.
I will show you the one that's hooked up to the shed and potentially even the
coop. We went big kahuna-mode on this one. This is a 500 gallon tank. Again,
it's the same setup, right? I'm not going to run through that again,
but it's 500 gallons. We put it on pavers that are just slightly taller.
The real reason is because then you can access the spigot a lot
easier. You can hook a pump up here if you need to,
all sorts of interesting things. But this is cool. On this one,
what you see here is the overflow.
And you'll see roughly how this is plumbed because we haven't buried this yet.
The only fitting that is completely glued in is this one here, just this elbow.
This one down here, as you can see, I can take that off if I want.
I can extend this pipe, bury it underground,
which is likely what I'm going to do.
And what happens is it'll go out as far as you want it to go out.
As long as you're sloped down, you're fine.
And then you have this little cap here that'll help to output some of the water.
So the plan for the overflow here is wherever the chicken coop ends up
going, it's going to go somewhere in where I'm standing right now,
in between this and in between this tree that I may have to take out.
Time will tell on that. It's actually not a native tree.
So I'm not that sad if I have to take it out. However I have to decide,
can I actually feed in the chicken coop roof into this?
The only way that will work,
let me just really tell you how this works really quickly.
It's kind of fascinating. The only way I can hook into this,
which is what's filling this tank from the chicken coop,
is if the chicken coop's downspout is higher than this.
Because that's the only way water finds its own level.
It will have to be higher in order to flow into this right here.
So I don't know if that's going to happen. Worst case scenario,
I use the chicken coop roof as a natural sort of swale. I kind of dig a trench.
I lead that water somewhere and I do some passive landscaping with it.
It'd be totally fine and still work amazing. First of all,
let's pour one out for this IBC, which I will probably be selling.
Make sure it goes to a good home. You've served well.
But we've got a new daddy in town. We've got this rain tank here, this cistern.
5,000 gallons.
So it's really just a bigger version of what you just saw. Intake right here.
Overflow right here. We have our spigot here.
We have an interesting little contraption here.
This just protects some of the irrigation components,
which it's hard for me to get out with one hand. There we go.
So I've got a clean out here.
What I can do is I can just let water out this way by unscrewing that.
Or I can actually screw this whole thing off.
Let's say the leaf filter didn't work for some reason.
There's some debris in here. Take this off, clean that out,
and I'd be good to go. The real interesting thing about this overflow,
this overflow is actually already set up. So as we walk out here, first of all,
let's just admire the time of day. Beautiful time of day.
We have some figs going here. Ooh, we're actually getting fruit,
very tasty, yellow long neck fig. But first of all, what do you not see?
You don't really even see the tank. The tank's right there.
You can barely catch the top of it. If I stand on this pile of dirt,
well then you can see it. But man, I'm very pleased.
This spot of the garden wasn't going to be used much anyways with the new fence
that went in, which there will be a video on.
So for those of you who've seen the gray water video,
if you haven't I highly recommend checking that out,
you'll know that all of this citrus here,
at least these four plants here and then these four plants here,
these are all watered by these two trenches that we dug.
And here are the outputs.
There's one there and there's one you can barely see over there.
So what we decided to do, given that the tank is right there,
is take this overflow and run it to right here to connect to this
trench. So, is it a perfect solution?
Not really because this area is just going to get even more water if that ever
fills up, which it probably honestly won't.
But we can always route it somewhere else or we can plant a lot more around this
area so we're using the overflow right away.
There's a lot of questions you probably have. And if you do have one,
please leave it in the Comments, but I'll try to address some right now.
This is the answer to one you probably are thinking right now.
And that question would be,
how do you actually know how much water is in the tank? Well,
take a look at what we have.
We have a little fitting that will screw directly onto this spigot.
You could release the water and hold this up just like
this, right? Straighten it out, of course. So you'd stand up,
hold it up like this because we know water finds its own level.
You have a clear tube that the water will fill up to the exact point in the tank
that the water is at.
Then what you do is just map it to these markings on the outside,
and you know how much you have.
Another question you're probably wondering is how much can I actually store as
far as capacity over the course of a year?
The total capacity of the system is 5,700. So I've got 5,000 here,
500, 200, we've got 5,700, right? So in theory,
that's the max I could store.
But you never really would store it all the way up because especially here,
when we get such little rain,
I wouldn't really want to run the risk of overflowing the system too much.
I'd much rather keep it at 50 to 60% full,
use it if I know rain is coming. And just based on projections,
off of all the surfaces that water is falling on my actual property - so
my roof, my shed,
all the different sort of roofs that I have here based on the structures that I
have - you can get about 600 gallons for an
inch of water off of a thousand square feet. So I can get,
if you just do that based on the amount of inches I get,
we're somewhere around the 7,000 to 9,000 range. So that's pretty solid.
It's more than my capacity. It's not some amazing amount, but then again,
this is why I'm doing it.
I don't get a lot of rain so I want to cherish and harvest as much as I can get.
The next question is how much did the whole thing cost?
I'm going to just say this very bluntly and very honestly, rainwater harvesting,
especially in my area, it's really not an economically feasible option.
If you compare it to the rate that you're paying for your tap water,
it is dramatically more expensive.
Even if you amortize that cost over like 10 years or so.
So maybe we'll put some numbers up here. If not,
look in the description of the Comments and we'll do a breakdown for you.
But even if I blend the cost of this whole system over a decade,
it is still at least four to 10 times more expensive.
It actually might be 40 times more expensive.
I think the gray water system is somewhere around twice as expensive compared to
tap over 10 years.
And I think the rainwater is like 40 times more expensive over 10 years compared
to tap because the tap rate is just so, so cheap.
So that's something to think about. Now,
is it all about if it makes strict economic sense?
Definitely not because the rainwater is a dramatically better water source for
your garden and you also get some resiliency at the house, right?
So if I have a few thousand gallons in the tank and we have some sort of water
contamination issue, or we have a pandemic like the one that just happened,
whatever, you never really know what the future's going to hold.
This is a nice insurance policy. I will say this right now as far as costs.
I probably wouldn't have done a system of this scale unless I had the
generous grant of my water district.
I actually emailed my water district and I said, hey,
I saw you have a couple of these grants. Has anyone ever applied for them?
Here's what I'm looking to do. I really want to go rainwater harvesting,
gray water, take it to the next level on an urban lot.
And they were excited because apparently no one has applied for these grants in
quite some time.
And so I had a $5,000 grant for labor and materials, like things like, you know,
signage or anything like that.
And then I had another $5,000 grant for the actual hard cost of things like the
tanks and the fittings and stuff like that.
So I actually applied that to the gray water and the rainwater system.
So it kind of blends out. But I would say all in all,
I'm probably out about $2,000 of my own pocket when you include that
$10,000 grant.
So all in all the gray water and the rainwater together was probably somewhere
around $12,000, $12,500.
I don't think that's actually that big of a deal if water is this scarce and
you're creating a future asset for many, many years and decades to come.
But I will say, without the grant, that would have stung a lot.
So you do have to keep that in mind.
I always want to be transparent about costs for some of this stuff cause I know
a lot of people on YouTube are just blowing cash.
They make it seem like it's something that's completely attainable for everyone.
It certainly isn't for a lot of people.
So I would say gray water is a way better use of your money than rainwater,
at least at the start.
And then you can kind of build up and invest in other things.
So it's not gonna rain for awhile, which is the bummer about this install.
It's done, it just is not going to get put into use for like, I mean certainly,
probably not the summer. Maybe a little bit in the fall.
Hopefully we have a wetter fall/winter and next spring in 2022.
But you guys better believe I'm going to be out here screaming when we actually
get this thing filling up with rain. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Any Comments, like I said,
drop them in the Comments section because I might even have Brook on,
who helped me out with this install. Actually her and her team did most of this.
The labor was on her this time. And we'll do a follow-up video.
We'll do a Q&A like we're going to do with the gray water stuff. So stay tuned.
Good luck in the garden. Keep collecting that water and keep on growing.