Barn Tank

We've started on a new 7400 gallon tank that will eventually be filled from the barn roof and will be for the animals, which are our main consumer of water.

It is 16 ft x 16 ft and 4 ft tall. It is located uphill from the barn site, so that the animal waterers will all be gravity fed.

We leveled out the area that the machine cleared and then compacted it. We then added a layer of sifted sand. There are galvanized posts every few feet all the way around, with the corner posts staked out for added strength. To these posts is secured a galvanized welded mesh. And that's how we've left it for now.

We will be attaching a stucco mesh, then a tarp, then a pond liner to the inside of this structure. And then, when the tank is full of water, we will stucco the walls with concrete to make it a little more permanent. The roof will be a tarp at first, which we will later cover with acrylic concrete.

The reason we've left it at this unfinished stage is that it seems unlikely that we will get the rain needed to fill it, even a little, and we are worried that the wind and weather will blow it around before we get more rain (next June). In the meantime, it makes a pretty good cage for a toddler!

So far this year we have had 9 inches of rain, and only September remains of our rain season (with no promise of rain for the next week or two at least). Our normal rainfall is 30 inches or more. We fear that we won't even get the house tank filled this year. I guess we need to build more roofs for catchment in case of a drought - add it to the list of things to do!

For more photos, click here.

The cistern is finished

We had a week of clear skies, allowing everything to dry out so that we could get a little work done outside.

We had a little cleanup work to do in and around the tank, of course, after so much rain. After that, we:




* put up some vinyl over the bolts, to protect the liner from any sharp edges.
* put up the liner track
* unfolded the liner and put it into the track (very easy as it happens)
* cleaned any mud off the liner
* did the plumbing

The plumbing deserves a little explanation to itself, as it might not be apparent from the photos. The roof has two downspouts, which connect into the same line, buried in the ground (we will eventually concrete around the pipes from the roof to the ground). That line goes into the tank at the top (which is several inches lower than the downspouts of the gutter). Within the line, at the lowest spot, Abe put in a clean-out valve, which we will be hooking onto a hose this week. This allows us to clean out the water that stays in the line periodically.

The plumbing from the tank to the house is as you would expect. Coming out of the tank there is a main valve, then a pipe rising into the air, then another valve, then a check valve. The pipe then connects with the existing pipe coming from the cistern (1000 gallons) that is still on the system, and then into the house. The only thing needing extra info is the overflow pipe (the one that goes up into the air). This goes up and pours out where we want the overflow to be. There is another part that is there only if we one day want to add a backup overflow.

So now it's all completely done, minus a few 5 minute jobs (like putting a screen in the gutter, etc.), and we are ready for it to rain. Just need 10 inches to fill her up - over 7000 gallons.
And now the cistern is completely finished.

For all photos, see here.

New Water Tank

This week we set up our new 1000 gallon tank. That totals 2400 gallons, and will be more than sufficient to last us until next year's rains, by which time we will hopefully have built our 7000 gallon ferro-cement tank.

We made it on 1400 gallons from the rains of last summer until this June (we do usually get a little rain in winter, but not this past year), but only just. We were two days away from having to haul water. Admittedly we weren't using our own water for construction, which we brought in from the village.

This is more storage than we have ever had before, and we love it. The only drawback is that we had a ton of rain this weekend, which all overflowed onto the ground. And since we installed the tank on Tuesday, we have had little more than a drizzle!! Oh well, it'll come.

More Photos