Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post. This post goes over a large rainwater harvesting system that is even bigger than the one posted last week called DIY Rainwater Collection System. This system catches and stores up to 1200 gallons of water and has multiple filtering steps to keep debris out of the tank.  You can see a video of this system being put in by going to the Great Escape Farms YouTube channel.

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post

The system shown consists of four IBC totes, two LeafEater filters, two First Flush Filters and a good bit of PVC pipe.

Before the IBC totes were put into place I used a laser level to get their foundation perfectly level.  The foundation consists of cinder blocks.  Each IBC tote is sitting on six cinder blocks.  Then I put a piece of two by six on top of the cinder blocks to make sure the weight was evenly distributed.

All’s Level

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post - Left Side

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post – Left Side

With all four IBC totes being perfectly level with one another, now I can tie them together.  All four IBC Totes are tied together at the bottom with 2″ PVC pipe.  Each pair is tied together and then the pairs have a 2″ pipe going under the walkway connecting them together.  This way any water in one tote will be evenly distributed between the four totes.

Once the tanks fill up, I don’t want the water to dump out right where the totes area and flood out my garage.  So I added an overflow diversion system designed to move overflow water away from the garage area and dump off into the yard.  Eventually a swale will be put in to receive that runoff water and to keep the water on the property longer.  You can see the overflow pipe on the right hand side of the picture below titled: Large Rainwater Harvesting System – Right Side.

About the Video

Really Large Rainwater Harvesting System a How To Post – Right Side

I did a post and video on a single tote system last week.  It is called  DIY Rainwater Collection System. That post has part numbers and links to all of the filters that I used as well as describes how to acquire some of the other parts like the IBC totes.

I installed the system over the weekend in the rain and as you can with see the bluish color about half way up on the totes, I caught a lot of water.  That is actually water that we caught from an overnight rain.  I was very excited to wake up and find that we had captured almost 600 gallons of water overnight!

We will be doing another video and post on lessons learned and troubleshooting the system.  I had quite a few things go wrong and not work as designed and sometimes the best way to learn is through mistakes.  Why not make them my mistakes and not yours 🙂  Keep an eye out for that post in the next two weeks.

The below picture titled Large Rainwater Harvesting System is actually a YouTube video of this project being put together.  Just click on the video and it will play right in this window.

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