- Rainwater is an incredible resource for our gardens
but too few of us actually know how to harvest
and capture it which is why in this video
I'm showing you how I capture 5,700 gallons in my garden.
It's fitting that it's raining.
As we get into this guide
I'm gonna give you as much information
as I currently have on how to do a rain capture system.
But before we get into it
know that this is a pretty epic system
and you don't have to go to this level.
Even getting something like a rain barrel and putting it
on a preexisting gutter is a step in the right direction.
So let's go to where it all begins, the roof.
The first thing to know is what type
of roof do you have
and how much water can you actually capture
off the roof to store in a barrel, much like this one.
So let's take a look at the garden shed, just as an example.
I have a roof over here
and a general rule of thumb, if you're working in Imperial
I'll put some metric up for you as well
is that if you have a thousand square foot roof
and you get an inch of rain, that is 600 gallons worth
of water that you can capture off of that system.
So here's the garden shed
and you can see we have a gutter, a roof.
And then this contraption I'm about to show you here
and this is a little microcosm of how you might capture
but now we need to get
into how you can safely capture it off of a roof.
So this contraption is what's called a filter system.
Up here you have your gutter.
So these are some copper gutters, little boujie, but hey
it's epic gardening.
I wanted to get a little fancy little, little, little sexy
up on the roof, but you can do any sort of gutter system.
And what I have here is what's called a leaf filter.
So this expands out the pipe a little bit
and then there's some mesh right here that basically
will collect all the large debris.
Now, what's this long tube that's not going
into the rainwater tank?
Doesn't make a lot of sense, right?
Well, this is what's called a first flush filter.
What this does is it will capture all
of the finer particulate dirt
and dust that will fall through the leaf filter
but we don't want in the rainwater tank.
So it'll fill up this tube with the first 10-
15 gallons worth of water, and then the clean stuff
once it reaches this level, will start to filter over here.
So every time it rains, you want to come down here.
There's a little valve at the bottom, and you can purge
that valve and all the dirty water will come
out so that the next time it rains
it fills up the first flush filter again.
And now we get to talk about the tank.
The rain's getting a little intense here and I'm out
in the front to show you another rain barrel
and explain the particulars of the system.
So really what you want to do is you want to
have a barrel that won't overflow too quickly based
on the amount of square footage of your roof.
So this is like a 250 gallon barrel, which by the way
you can get rebates on with your city.
Almost every city has some sort
of rain barrel program to mitigate this cost.
But what you'll wanna make sure
that you do is get one that can have an overflow valve just
in case it does overflow.
So let's say it rains
like crazy here in San Diego, which hopefully it will,
I know that this will overflow, right?
So this will fill up
and then what will happen is this will come
down and goes right into this beautiful artichoke patch.
And so I get to use the water no matter what.
It doesn't start overflowing this system.
It would start spilling outta here.
It'd clog up the gutters and stuff.
It wouldn't be a good recipe for success.
And just as a quick side note
this is exactly what you want to see on that leaf filter.
Without a system like this
you're gonna have this going straight into here.
So far we've addressed some more basic rainwater
capture systems off of smaller surfaces.
But what about that cistern
that was at the start of the video?
That's a 5,000 gallon cistern.
So we saw the system over here how water gets
off of a roof filters correctly and gets into a rain barrel.
But how does the water actually get over there?
To know that, let's go look at my roof.
My house here at the Epic Homestead is almost
the perfect case study for rainwater capture.
It's about a thousand square foot of roof space.
And so I have this gutter system dropping.
You can see it active right now, just pouring water
from my entire roof into the same system I just showed you.
But where does this tube go?
Once it reaches the first flush level
it's gonna drop down into the abyss, and this is
where gravity fed rainwater capture systems come into play.
As long as this level right here
the input of the water system is higher
than the cisterns input all the way over there
this underground tube will perfectly
and automatically gravity feed the water in.
I think the rain has finally died
down a little bit as we're over here at the cistern.
So like I mentioned, this is our intake for the cistern.
Now this is about 12-14 inches lower
than the intake over there that I just showed you.
So if I were to hop up on this and pop open the top
I can see that water is flowing in almost as if by magic
but it really just is the gravity system at work.
So the way that this cistern works, it was dug
in about 14 inches or so to provide some stability.
This was a big install.
If you wanna see the play-by-play, I encourage you to check
out the video over on the Epic Homesteading channel.
But it's been incredible to have 5,000
plus gallons worth of storage here.
And with rainwater capture
it's all about redundancies and contingencies.
So let's say I didn't use enough water and it's raining
like crazy, and this is gonna overflow well
this also has an outlet over here
that it can just gravity overflow
into my citrus orchard up in the front yard.
But if I'm really in a pinch
I actually have a pump that I wanna show you right here.
I have a valve down here that feeds into this PVC pipe.
So just a way to get the water out.
Again, that's a gravity fed method
because it's at the bottom of the cistern.
Now what I do is if I turn this nozzle here
it allows water to pass through this pump.
Actually triggers the pump to turn on
and now over there, there's a hose that's pouring water out.
So I'm over here in my pond patio area
and this is the hose that's coming from the cistern.
So as you can see, I have it on
it's pouring out water from the cistern into this patio.
And you might be thinking, hey, Kev, why?
Why are you wasting all this water?
Well, I have a trick up my sleeve.
In fact this is a permeable patio
that is an underground reservoir
for the pond that you guys probably have seen here
on the channel.
In fact, every single rock area you see here
is actually an underground reservoir.
Now, that's not really rainwater capture
that's a little overkill
but sort of a fancy way to repurpose this water.
But if I really want to, not now cause it's raining
but I could go ahead and water the garden
with whatever hose implement I want directly
from the capture system.
Conserving and reusing and repurposing materials
whether it be raining down from the sky or otherwise
in the garden, one of the most important things you can do
and rainwater truly is better
for your garden for a few different reasons.
Number one, if there's a lightning storm or a thunderstorm
there's actually a ton
of nitrogen that gets infused into the rainwater.
Basically, the lightning will take the atmospheric nitrogen
out of the air, put it into formats that can be absorbed
in water and will come down in the sky.
So, there's nitrates in rain
effectively is what I'm saying.
There's fertilizer in thunderstorm rain.
Number two, there's no chlorine, there's no chloramine
in that water, so it's gonna be a more pure source.
Number three, if it's coming off of a roof system
and you have proper filtration, like I've just showed you,
you do have some level of organic material pickup
like something like bird droppings or dirt, et cetera
that's gonna bring
in a little bit more trace mineral into that system.
So there's a ton, a ton of resources on rainwater capture.
If you have questions, I'll do a Q and A
at some point in the future, and I encourage you
check out the Epic Homesteading channel.
That's where I like to put a lot
of my more homesteading and sustainability topics.
And until next time, guys, good luck in the garden,
stay dry and keep on growing.
(upbeat music)