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How to Make a Splash with Your Rain Barrel
128 Plays2 years ago
If you're looking for a way to save water, money, help your plants grow, you might want to consider installing a rain barrel in your backyard. A rain barrel is a simple device that collects and stores rainwater from your roof, which you can use for watering your plants. In this podcast episode, we'll talk about the benefits of rain barrels, how to choose the right one for your needs, and how to set it up and maintain it. So grab your umbrella and join us as we dive into the world of rain barrels!
Homeowner’s Guide to Rainwater Harvesting: Rain Barrels and Beyond
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Horticulture Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Heart Culture Podcast.
Debate on Themed Reese's Candies
00:00:22
Speaker
Happy New Year. I'm sorry. I had my first pumpkin Reese's of the season just now and I think it's already kicked in. Hashtag eat seasonal.
00:00:35
Speaker
What is a pumpkin Reese's? I don't think I've seen this. Oh my gosh. I'm sorry y'all. We'll kick him off the podcast. What are you even doing with my life? You've never seen like the Easter egg ones either? I've seen the Easter egg ones. What is this happiness I've been hearing so much about? Okay. All right. Listen, listen, everybody quiet down. This is important. Okay. So the themed Reese's, the pumpkin shaped ones, the Easter egg ones, the Christmas tree shaped ones are
00:01:05
Speaker
More peanut butter than the normal Reese's on the ratio. There's a ratio to chocolate to peanut butter So there's a very thin chocolate layer draped over a large chunk of peanut butter and they're the best by far It's sort of the shit yeah, it's like elongated pumpkin I mean, I don't know if you if you showed it to someone with no prior knowledge if they'd be like Oh, that's definitely a pumpkin
00:01:33
Speaker
It's like a Cinderella pumpkin. The Christmas trees during that season of the year definitely look like Christmas trees though. And the Easter eggs are my favorite. Yeah, I agree. They can be plussed up by putting them in the freezer.
00:01:48
Speaker
for a little more tooth, if you want a little more tooth, or if you just want to. Just slow me down from eating them in one bite. If you want to house them one after the other, keep them warm. Keep them warm on the edge of the liquid and just line them up like a shirt. You want to put the little white papers inside of each other into a long shoot and just have somebody push the whole line in here. I like this conversation that we're just continuing on along the lines of things and fall that make us happy. I mean, this is part of it. Seasonal treats. That needs to be an episode.
00:02:16
Speaker
You can really up your s'mores game if you replace your chocolate with Reese's. I had that for the first time at your house, actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. Look at us. Look at the. Yeah. Which one do you think came first, like the actual like pumpkins or Reese's pumpkins? Like, do you think that the pumpkins were invented? I think someone planted the Reese's pumpkins to make them look like the Reese's pumpkins. In that regard, the truest form is the Reese's pumpkin. Yes.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's the OG. I retract my previous statement about it maybe not looking exactly like a pumpkin.
00:02:52
Speaker
I dare you, the audacity. Anyways, well, we could probably do a whole podcast on receipts. Candy. Welcome to the fall tree podcast. Yeah, we'd have to do a two-part episode, one for the chocolate base. Honestly, we're all trash bandits. One for the more fruit-based. And one for candy corn. We can eat really culturally beautiful, and then we can also eat just garbage. I have one more comment about candy.
00:03:23
Speaker
So I think like, you know, I don't know if you all have had this in your life. Hopefully, hopefully you haven't. But I had a moment of like my age, the reality of my age and that maybe the the end of of childhood a couple of years ago, the springtime. It's been a while. OK, it's been a couple of years, like like single digits, though.
00:03:50
Speaker
And I ate like, you know, back in other times in my life, the volume of candy that I ate had no virtually no effect. I ate so many Sour Patch kids that I like had like what felt like a chemical burn on my tongue and in my mouth.
00:04:14
Speaker
And I legitimately have not enjoyed or even really thought as much about candy since then. And it's not any kind of good, you know, not like I'm like, yeah, okay, finally I kicked the habit. I'm like, there you went. There went the yummy. The body can't handle it. There you go. There's like a point in life. It's like a definitive moment where it's like you realize that there is nothing stopping you from going to the store and buying a cake and bringing home and eating the whole cake. Yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker
Except you, right? Like, except your body. I feel like this needs to be included in your memoir someday is, how do you know when's enough? And you get blisters. I mean, maybe that should be it. You get blisters in your mouth. Yeah, so many sour patch kids. Well, because it's just like, I don't know. That in particular has this real weird brain cycle where it's like, ooh, hit me with the sour again. Ooh, now it's sweet. Now hit me with the sour again. Now it's sweet. Oh, but it was terrible.
00:05:12
Speaker
But so now I just make sure that I help other people who are still able to to really enjoy their candy or candy season. Service a guide for the rest of us. I'm just taking all your Sour Patch Kids moving forward. Okay. Some guardrail. Feel free to give me those out of your Halloween bag. Cautionary tail. Anyways. Once Ray checks them for drugs. Yes.
00:05:35
Speaker
and all the other bad things we used to look for. It's so funny. My parents and my dad was a police officer. My mom was an RN. You had no fun. Exactly, exactly. It was very serious. As an adult, I go, who's giving out drugs to children?
00:05:52
Speaker
For free, like what? I don't know that much about them, but why would you do that? That doesn't seem like a good profit, Mark. Because you don't know what house you got that from. You can't go back. It was the effect of the 80s, man. People were wearing a lot of weird stuff. The beauty of pumpkins into this. We went to a dark place of candy. Willa Wonka is rolling over right now. Of course it was me. I'm always going to take it there. Yeah, someplace dark.
Introduction to Rain Barrels and Irrigation Systems
00:06:20
Speaker
Side note, okay, not side. Actually, the main focus of this podcast is that- They will also talk about rain barrels and irrigation systems, maybe. We're talking about rain barrels, some low flow irrigation. Those of you who maybe are looking for some alternatives or some sustainability or just fun.
00:06:43
Speaker
That's what we're talking about today. Fun with rain barrels. Lowering your water bill, maybe. Yeah, lowering your water bill. There's lots of cool stuff. So we're going to throw some numbers at you, but we're also going to throw, you know, some cool experiences. And speaking of experiences, I practice this, if you can't tell. Speaking of experiences, Brett, you have recently done some installs of the rain barrel, have you not?
Brett's Rain Barrel Setup
00:07:07
Speaker
Bald boy has become barrel boy.
00:07:11
Speaker
Oh, as if overnight. Yeah, I did recently conceive of and execute a plan to have some barrels to catch some rain off of my roofs at my house. Nice. Because you have like a detached system. Do you have it kind of getting off?
00:07:31
Speaker
How many, how many slopes are you pulling water from? I guess I should say. Well, so our back porch is kind of is like mostly flat and then it connects to the house. And so it's sort of like one big slope of the house and then the porch and that goes into one collection point. And then one side of our garage roof goes into another collection point. The first one is probably two to three times the size as far as like catchment area. Right.
00:07:59
Speaker
Just tapping gutters, is that what we're talking about here? My system, if you work from the point where the rain goes in, back to the other stuff. You got the downspout. I actually cut into the downspout and put it in an adapter that I purchased online. That comes out
00:08:21
Speaker
and it's got a quarter turn valve, which hooks up to a hose, like a regular standard garden hose, which then feeds into the top of the rain barrel. Then that rain barrel is then tied into another rain barrel with a little short piece of hose.
00:08:42
Speaker
It acts as an overflow. The water goes into the first barrel and fills it up to almost the top, and then it spills over. There's some decisions that I made along the way that I don't regret, but there's particular reasons why I did them that way. Something that you did this by yourself, you didn't buy rain barrels, you bought containers and created.
00:09:08
Speaker
I bought some containers from a local container repurposing store that are used for all kinds of different things. I believe the ones that I bought had been used to transport particular types of water.
00:09:26
Speaker
that was inside of a liner in there, almost like a garbage bag inside of your garbage can, and this was the can, and it has a lid with a ring, it's like a ring lid with a clamp thing so you can remove the lid. All of my
00:09:47
Speaker
Filling mechanisms are through the top, so I didn't punch any holes in the side to fill. Then I have a different application that I use where I'm actually, I have pumps to pump water out of the rain barrel to pressurize it.
Rainwater Benefits for Plants
00:10:09
Speaker
Nice.
00:10:10
Speaker
So, I primarily use them to water my bonsai and the reason why I'm collecting water in the first place is because our groundwater is very, very basic and that has a not- It's a pumpkin spice lodge. I love it. Totally basic. Be good to it. Flannel season. Boots, baby. Yeah, boots, boots, baby.
00:10:33
Speaker
And so the plants tend to prefer a little something a little more acidic, also without as much chlorine and chloramine in it and all that kind of fun stuff. But in order to water them, I kind of need it to function almost like a hose. And the pumps that I have are powerful enough. They're like a well pump, like what you would use to pump water out of a well. And they pump it out at a pretty good rate. And I control I have them set up controlled on a
00:11:00
Speaker
remote wireless remote that I can carry around with me and turn them off and on. Nice. So, you know, like what kind of PSI you had to hit like 30 or something for your like. I mean, it's coming out higher pressure than our hose house. Oh, wow. Cool. OK. And that's over like probably a 50 foot run. Mm hmm. Not much. Not much. Height gain. But this is a higher, a little bit higher tech, but the rain barrel portion itself is not.
00:11:29
Speaker
It's just, and I also have some extra vessels. One of them is a collapsible bladder that's
00:11:39
Speaker
I have one of those. Not a medical condition. It looks kind of like a garbage can sort of, but it's, and what I will do is I will, if we're going to have more rain than the barrels are going to be able to take, I will pump that out of there into that collapsible bladder short term so that they can catch another round of rain. So I've got to ask about these barrels. Sorry, Alexis.
00:12:06
Speaker
When you went to purchase those, did you specify? Did you tell them, hey, I'm going to be using rain barrels? Of course they're not for drinking water, but it needs to be some kind of food grade kind of content. Did, were they able to give you assurances that that's what you were getting? I'm just curious on the source of those. Yeah. They told me that they are food grade. Awesome.
00:12:28
Speaker
And that they were previously used in an application that certainly exceeds my requirements. Yeah. A lot, and it's an interesting point, you know, cause a lot of them you'll find, it'll be like old, like sausage barrels that were large volume sausage or like, um, pickles, pickles.
00:12:48
Speaker
that kind of stuff. There's an aspect of maybe washing. These were, again, they were for some reason shipped with a liner inside. Inside of the barrel was completely untouched and seemingly fine. Wasn't briny and salty? It was not. I didn't even get any free salt to
00:13:10
Speaker
Suck on it. Those had lids on them, which is probably a pretty important thing for rain barrels, I imagine, for many different reasons, safety and other. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I will say they were probably a little more expensive because the lids were a little nicer. They're not screw tops. They can just be lifted off and on, but also secured. And with me going in through the top, I didn't want to have to unscrew. Yeah, so that's why I got that style.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, so I have four of them, each of them and they're a pair in two different sites. And so each of them is about 55 gallons each barrel. And then my extra, the extra capacity that I have is around 150 gallons. So what's the math on that? Like probably 300 and something gallons total that I can hold at a given time.
00:14:10
Speaker
And that can fill up pretty quick, I imagine, during a rain event, depending on the size of your roof. I bet that, and I hear that comment some from homeowners, is that they're always shocked when what they consider to be a large container just fills up really quickly on a small roof.
00:14:22
Speaker
I have, I have some numbers if anybody's interested. I'm very interested. Okay. Because we're, we're talking about about 300 gallons of water is what you're kind of referring to. So an inch of rainfall, uh, which isn't, you know, a huge rain event, at least for those of us in Kentucky on 500 square feet of roof. Uh, so, so that's. Roughly a 20 by 25, if it was a perfect square, 20 by 25, not perfect square rectangle, technically.
00:14:53
Speaker
A perfect square. An inch of rain on that space is 300 gallons of water. So it's not a ton of space that you need. One rain event on that, even that small roof could fill up all of your rainbows, I guess, then Brett. Yeah, I would say. That's a smaller roof than what he's operating with. Yeah, I would say one of ours is probably double that. The other one's probably about that size.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah. And what do you, as far as the system, once your excess, even your bladder type container gets filled up, what do you do with the water then? Does it have some kind of way to escape and like get away from the foundation of the house and all that? How do you deal with that, Brett? Just curious. I have overflows on the tanks. And I also, so one of the advantages
00:15:41
Speaker
and disadvantages, I guess, of the smaller system is that it fills up really quickly. That's a disadvantage because you don't get as much water, but the advantage is it pretty much is going to fill up and I can go out and turn off the collection pretty quick afterward. So it hasn't been a huge issue, but yeah, so I would say overall, it's kind of like...
00:16:06
Speaker
Try to have, for me, there's another hose coming off of a threaded bung or whatever you call it. A threaded fitting that I put on and it just kind of feeds out a little bit. Tell us about the gizmo that you put in the gutter. There's some kind of interface in with your gutter. I'm assuming that the way that you get the water, what does that look like for you in your particular
Water Diversion and Overflow Management
00:16:33
Speaker
system? I know there's different options, but what's yours look like?
00:16:36
Speaker
The one that I have is made out of PVC, kind of looks like it came from the same place that manufactures stormtrooper helmets. Perfect, solid. And you know, you got to diversify in this economy, right? And it's got, you have to cut your downspout, which wasn't that big of a deal for me. And then you,
00:17:04
Speaker
drop the top of the sleeve it up on and then it's got inside. It has this diverter thing that most of it goes to fill up the barrel, but it will let some bypass. Importantly, the top part can be pulled up above to be able to use it to clean it out. If you've ever had clogged gutters,
00:17:31
Speaker
Well, this happens with these things too, maybe even more so. And so there is a clean out, clean out component. But overall, I would say it took about, I'm a relatively capable person and it probably took me about 10 or 15 minutes to install each one. Oh, cool. I know there's some really cool options for the whole gutter interface. I ordered it online from a major retailer.
00:17:56
Speaker
that with no official affiliation with one of the largest rivers in the world, or rainforest in the world. And it was- Nihil. Yeah. A bit of a nihilist myself. And it was about, I think it was around 30 or $35 or something like that. And they do, people were talking earlier, I'm curious to hear. So I'm, with some things I have a...
00:18:20
Speaker
I'm nervous about, I would almost rather have a manual system than something with automation that may break and then I'll be disappointed. But automation would also be really sweet. So you all were talking a little bit about some of those things that have an ability to like kind of shut off on their own when the barrel's full or something like that. Was that right? To be clear, mine is a manual thing with a valve that I turn off and on when I do or don't want collection to happen.
00:18:48
Speaker
The one I know about, which I have not used, but a good friend of mine who's an agent who does, I don't know how many rain barrels he has now,
Manual vs Automated Rainwater Collection
00:18:57
Speaker
but it's a lot. And this is the system that he uses, sent it over to me and it's called a flex fit diverter. And so it's kind of like a rubber, it's a harder rubber, but it's still a little bit malleable.
00:19:11
Speaker
and you drill like a three inch hole in the side of the gutter or it's the side of the downspout and you put this
00:19:19
Speaker
in there and it kind of fills up that space, but sort of like yours, Brett, where it allows some water to go through, but it also sends some to the barrel. It has that, so it kind of looks like a donut shape that goes inside of the downspout. And then it, so that outer ring of the donut sends water into the barrel. And then when the barrel is full, it kind of like backs up into the small
00:19:45
Speaker
There's a little pipe, you know, a foot long or something that goes between the barrel and the downspout. And so that just fills up with water so that once it's full, no more water can go in there. And then it just continues down the downspout like it always would. I believe that kit you're talking about, Alexis, it also, the cool thing about that when you're talking about it comes with a winterizing plug that you can easily remove with two screws. Is that the one you remove the gizmo from the gutter and then just put your plug
00:20:11
Speaker
Into the gutter screw that in then it's winterized and the gutter continues to function as normal before the modification Yeah, yeah, that's a really cool one. That's a pop and it's cheap. It's like 20 bucks You can get like a little flex pop. Is that the one that's like? Yeah Yeah, you can get like the whole kit which is even like if you don't already have like a hole saw It'll send you that that's you know, the perfect fit. If you have a three is one that's fine But you know, you can kind of buy it all and in one go and
00:20:39
Speaker
Which was, which was really cool because it takes, you know, you don't have to go outside and flip that valve. You know, what if you're not home? And I know that like you have, it's not like the end of the world, Brad, if you can't do that, it sounds like, but, uh, just one less thing to think about when it's, especially if like where I would be putting my rain barrels, I'd want them like on my high tunnel or on my barn. And so I don't want to trudge all the way out there to do that in a rainstorm.
00:21:02
Speaker
Right. But yeah, I was looking at some of these kind of larger systems like this publication we can link from Iowa State about kind of catchment of rainwater and really large kind of cistern scale type of deals. And they use the same technology that kind of diverter valve that automatically shuts off after a certain flow, but they have it
00:21:27
Speaker
set up or they recommend setting one up to divert the first flush of water that comes across to kind of any debris and stuff like that that's on the roof, that when there is a rainfall event, that it just essentially goes into a very small chamber. And then once that chamber fills up,
00:21:43
Speaker
it kicks over into the actual catchment device to kind of, you know, reduce issues with algae buildup and pathogens and things like that. That's important for the larger tanks because I mean, small tanks, you can obviously tip those over, rinse them out, which I really encourage people to do every now and again. But large tanks, you really don't have that option or at least it's not very convenient on the big tanks. So that seems to that that really makes sense for big systems that you really don't want to sludge up the bottom of to be in the bottom of the container to be clear.
00:22:13
Speaker
I am married to a person.
00:22:17
Speaker
who describes herself as reasonable, I would describe her as lacking vision and ambition when it comes to rainwater collection. The real question is, does she listen to this podcast later? She does not. How much trouble are you going to be in? Okay. Fantastic. You're fine. Carry on. So feel free to just go off. I'm a tech star and be like, you're going to need to hear this episode. We're about 20 minutes in. So I looked at considerably larger systems
00:22:45
Speaker
because like you said it fills up really quickly and you know it's better than 300,000 gallons you know it's better than 30,000 gallons. Is that a water tank? Yeah we've never crossed 10 percent capacity but we could if we needed to. Now we're talking about these tanks are these tanks aren't clear are they because I
00:23:10
Speaker
I have been associated with tanks in the past that, that allowed light to pass into the tank. And you had a big problem with that. And you guys can probably guess what that is from experience or you just know algae growth. Yes. So your tanks, Brett, are they lot blocking? The ones that I have now are opaque. The ones I was look, some of them that I'm looking at, and this is another example or, uh, uh, the type of tank that's really common. And I've seen a lot across the state.
00:23:40
Speaker
of Kentucky are these IBC totes, so to speak. They're the ones that are- Oh yeah, big squares. Yeah, inside of a cage. In some cases, they're used to ship industrial chemicals. In some cases, they're used to even ship the syrup for Coke and Pepsi and stuff like that. But I have seen those get painted because they are translucent. They're not fully transparent, but they are translucent.
00:24:11
Speaker
And they're not, you know, they weren't designed to sit out in the sun. And that is a component of some of the things, the lifespan of some of the materials in the sun is a consideration. And so some things, you know, there does benefit from a coat of paint, even if it's a little bit down the line.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, the PVC does definitely have like degradation issues with UV. You know, it reminds me of I was on this kind of national research project where we're looking at this concept, but in very large scale with like, you know, sort of designed subbasins to catch irrigation water and recycle it and stuff like that. What kind of volume would these subbasins be? Like millions of gallons.
00:24:56
Speaker
Easy yes that's. Purchase the entire subdivision. Her eyes from just miles away like I felt that. Is it a burger or is it a system we don't know either way it's practical.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yes, either way. Well, and there's this trade off because, you know, UV treatment of water is a way to deal with pathogens. UV kills pathogens, but it also grows algae. And so, you know, we might think, oh, by having a clear retaining or a clear
00:25:35
Speaker
clear barrel or clear kind of holding thing that we would take advantage of that UV sanitation of the water. But the problem is the algae is what outpaces it. Yes. Like you're killing some stuff, but other things are right on the ball with you.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah. So it's kind of a give and take there. Can I point out, can I point out a couple of things that I think we've like kind of briefly passed by, but I want to make sure we're hitting on that. So the first one is you should not be using your rain barrel water for hand washing.
00:26:07
Speaker
washing your produce, anything that's gonna come in direct contact
Safety and Mosquito Prevention in Rain Barrels
00:26:11
Speaker
with edibles. Like we cannot recommend that you do that because it's not sanitized water, right? Like birds poop on your roof, okay? The water is gonna pass by that. And even if you've got a nice filter and stuff keeping that out, there's bacteria and things that are in that water. So don't use that to clean anything necessarily, nothing edible.
00:26:31
Speaker
And to that point, so Ray's comment earlier about the food grade kind of consideration is not so much about whether you're, we don't, do not drink the water out of the rain barrel. Regardless. Right. But it's more, to me it was more about like considerations of leachates where things can leach into the water. Heavy metals and things. And then I don't want to be putting that into my soil or into my little bonsai or anywhere just because then it can then be,
00:26:59
Speaker
transport it up into, if you're growing food crops, especially leafy greens and stuff like that, there's all kinds of strange considerations on pollutants and soil borne nasties. That's the reason for the food grade, not because you're going to be drinking out of the water. Right. Do not drink it. Sometimes there's some confusion there because we talk about all of your rain barrels need to be food grade. Yeah, that doesn't mean exactly. That doesn't mean we're actually drinking it. We're not drinking it. Yeah.
00:27:28
Speaker
And another thing is we're speaking from Kentucky where we are allowed to collect our rainwater. So if you are not in Kentucky, please make sure you track your regulations. There are some areas, states, and probably within states where you're not allowed to collect your rainwater. So if you're in Kentucky, as far as I know, you're good. You can not always double check, but you should be able to do that as far as we know.
00:27:53
Speaker
Uh, another thing I hear a lot when people bring up rain barrels, they worry about mosquitoes. Uh, so that's why it's very important Ray said earlier, having, you know, having a lid and Brett talked about the lid that he has. So it's not only just algae, but if you've got a lid, you shouldn't have any issues with mosquitoes. If for some reason, you know, the lid doesn't get clamped down or, you know, you have it off and forget to put it back on or whatever that is, you do have.
00:28:19
Speaker
some mosquitoes that you think have formed in there you can of course empty that bucket or bucket container or they make these little BT pellets so BT is a soil borne
00:28:35
Speaker
bacteria and it affects mosquitoes and only mosquitoes. And since, again, we're not drinking this water, you can use BT down in there to take care of those. Mosquito dunks. Mosquito dunks, yeah. I mean, you can find them anywhere. Yeah. Some municipalities, I think, give them out sometimes.
00:28:53
Speaker
Mm hmm. Right. So if you've got mosquitoes anywhere, you can, you can use those, but just a little thing. Don't skaters dunk on those skaters. You shouldn't have to worry about that. Right. Cause you want to catch water, but you don't want to create a mosquito habitat in your backyard. Right. Exactly.
00:29:08
Speaker
You don't want to do that. It's not good. Yeah, it's lame. Lastly, as one of the plant nerds on here, Brett talked about how using it for his bonsai and it's helpful, no chlorine. If you're having any issues with, say, any of your house plants or maybe some of your vegetables, certain times of year, we can see our aquifers change.
00:29:33
Speaker
I have a great example of this. When I was doing my master's research, I was doing some hydroponic cucumbers. Of course, we're pulling city water and I've got all the fertilizer in these buckets and it's mixing in with that water and everything's being irrigated. Well, this was in a greenhouse, so it was winter.
00:29:53
Speaker
and we were getting a lot of rainfall over the winter. So the water wasn't sitting in the aquifers very long and sitting in our limestone, which means it wasn't becoming as basic as it normally was. All of my levels were set to when our water was a lot more basic, full of that lime. So when the pH dropped, I ended up
00:30:14
Speaker
almost killing my research project because my pH was like 2.4 or something like that. So if you're getting just that rainfall, you can test that. So if you have some plants that are maybe more sensitive, you have good rainfall. There are plants, so I grow some carnivorous plants and they only will do rainfall. I cannot use city water on them and there's a lot of house plants that are the same way. So
00:30:38
Speaker
That's a it's a good option if you're kind of wanting to try something out Yeah, and I you know, I'll just say if anybody out there is looking to up how cool they are You can buy really reasonably priced good pH meters Online for yourself and then just measure pH whatever you want wherever you want no test strips
00:31:01
Speaker
No color, you know, color issues here. It just, you just go straight in. And so just as a relative amount, like our, the pH coming out of our hose at our house can be like 8.2 to like almost nine. Sometimes that is very basic or not, but it's, you know, it's basic, right? Seven is neutral. The rainwater is consistently like,
00:31:30
Speaker
6.3, 6.5 somewhere in there, which a lot of plants really enjoy. I started out this journey by, before I started doing the rainwater, I would actually like fill up some barrel, a different, the different container. I would fill it up. I would dechlorinate it, let it sit overnight. And then I would come out and add vinegar to it to bring the pH down because my bones, I liked it so much more.
00:31:57
Speaker
That is insane, right? I mean, these little trees on this is like, what are you doing? And I was like, why don't we just collect some rainwater instead of this large scale chemistry experiment you're doing? It's a constant problem, how basic some of the water sources around the state are in commercial production.
00:32:17
Speaker
to the point you have to modify that as Alexis was saying. It's just not a good growing environment when you're trying to max yields or just have healthy plants on a large scale. Something we haven't talked about another on the list. Did you have anything else that we hadn't that we brushed over? No, I was just saying like, you know, moving into some options as well for people and then like talking about
00:32:39
Speaker
You know, maybe they have a hose like you do where they're but some other options that they can distribute with all this caught water volume of water, but kind of yeah, exactly. I want to hear about how you are moving this around. Yeah.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah. I want to know, do you just feed it to the mosquitoes? We brushed over it with mine because I have a pump, right? That's how I get it from an A to point B, but most people... Is that an electric pump? Just a solar electric? It's electric, it runs off, it's plugged in. So both locations have access to just regular ones. In the barrel, or is that like an inline pump? It's an inline pump.
00:33:16
Speaker
Good deal, like a transfer pump then. I think that's what they're commonly called as a transfer pump. It's a specialized, heavier duty transfer pump that's often used for wells and other kind of applications like that. It's a pretty beefy one. In my experience with things like pumps, some of the overbuiltness can serve as a proxy for robustness and longer service life and that sort of thing. It's probably a little bit overkill for what I need, but in 10 years, I'll be like, yeah, it's still running.
00:33:46
Speaker
You can always use it to pressure wash your cars. That's right. I see those more and more, especially on like the homestead scenarios or commercial scenarios where you have a larger volume of water. And I've seen two different styles. One is in tank, which is not as common. And then the other is like a transfer top pump that's on the outside of the tank in line somewhere as the pump is located. But I see that more and more. And I've even seen, and I know we have a publication that some of you guys may talk about eventually here today.
00:34:16
Speaker
You know, it's impossible to kind of adapt that with solar panels. Yeah, those 10, 15, 20 watt pumps. The technology has gotten fantastic and a lot of, especially small irrigation systems, you know, they, they function off, you know, 15, 18 pounds of pressure.
00:34:35
Speaker
They don't take a lot of pressure, depending on how many zones you have. You have to be careful with that. But the technology is so good with these small base pumps, solar options, electric options. It's a pretty exciting time to be able to move that water, which water in one place is great, but then you've got to get it somewhere. So I think the options now are great. And you'll see that if you go on any of your river based
00:34:57
Speaker
uh, large, uh, re online retail outlets or wherever you, you know, go to do a basic search of pumps for rain barrels. You're going to come up with a lot of options. Yeah. And just to be, just to clarify, in case anybody out there is thinking about doing something like this and I would have loved
Using Pumps and Elevation for Water Flow
00:35:12
Speaker
to hear something like this. Cause I didn't find exactly what I was looking for as far as ideas for setup. So this, the pump sits in my case, it sits like on the, on the, like a cart thing that has a cover because you want to keep it out of the rain. Cause it's an electric pump.
00:35:26
Speaker
Is that an elevated cart to get a little bit of passive pressure, Brad? A little bit, but not terribly. More or less, it's on the ground just a little off the ground. Got you. Then it's got basically two ports. One of the ports is an inlet port that is like the sucking port that takes the water out of the rain barrel and there's a hose that runs up and is in the rain barrel. It's the straw and the Capri Sun. Then the other end is the outlet.
00:35:53
Speaker
And the outlet runs to the hose that has the wand at the end. And that's all there is to it. And then that has a plug that comes off the back that just plugs into a regular outlet.
00:36:03
Speaker
And I bought a remote outlet switch, so it plugs into the outlet switch, it just then plugs into the wall. So that's how I made it switchable from a remote. The power on and off. Yes, exactly. The power is always on, but the power to it is cut on and off by that switch, which is really handy, actually. I wish I had that on my regular hose, because there's sometimes where it's like, I just want it to
00:36:30
Speaker
They do make those. Sorry, Annie, but they make those. Well, that's good to know, right? It is, yes. They have timers and remote control. So if you're not a crazy person like me, and you don't necessarily need 60 PSI coming out of your brain barrel, I've seen it more common, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, I've seen it more common to just have a little spigot down
00:36:56
Speaker
you know, below the waterline, like with a little valve. That's typically where I see like up on platforms, I'll see that elevated anywhere from one foot to three foot, but it takes a little bit of side prep because remember like a 50 gallon
00:37:12
Speaker
water collection unit weighs around 400 pounds so you know to have that nice and level is pretty important you don't want that weight you know getting out of control or being tippy that's a safety issue but the other practical reason for having those elevated is simply
00:37:27
Speaker
so you can get containers under, pressure is one, but to get containers under there to fill up. If you're just collecting the water at the barrel, at the unit, you just have some kind of spigot and that's the reason to get them up off the ground just a little bit. And Alexis mentioned another really important concept here and one that's near and dear to me because I changed the location of my garden this year to take advantage of this concept when I install my rain barrel next year.
00:37:53
Speaker
is that you do gain pressure for every foot. It's like what I'm trying to remember. 2.3 feet of elevation is one psi. One psi. My garden is 35 foot below grade for my house is I'm lucky I have a good slope. So I'm going to get around 15 pounds of free pressure, no pump at all. And 15 pounds is enough to run some drip tubes. It's actually enough to run, you know, a lot of different drip tubes if I don't do too many zones at one time and keep the pressure
00:38:23
Speaker
between 15 and 18. Yeah, so that is that I have a perfect setup for passive with no pump at all, just to use that passive pressure that I gained from elevation differential between where my garden sits and where my container is going to sit on the right backside of my home. So I've changed locations of the garden to take advantage of that because I didn't necessarily have good pump options in my gardens that because it's kind of down over the hill.
00:38:54
Speaker
And I've kind of cleared off a new spot, but I had that in mind, that kind of rain barrel math. And I think that I'm going to not have to use a pump at all to get the water down there. So that's sort of my transfer scenario. Incredible. That is awesome. Yeah, I'm lucking out. What kind of area are you working with, with like your garden or your zone, so to speak? Oh, it's, it's about like thousand feet, 35 to 40 feet, kind of long and about 20 feet wide.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah. So do the math on that. You're going to zone it out for a drip, aren't you? I was told there would be no math. Yeah. So it's a pretty good little area. So I'm going to have, and I've not done those zone calculations yet for drip tape, for your average drip tape. So speaking of drip tape, I'm going to take the segue. I'm not going to let you give it to me. I'm going to take it. No.
00:39:48
Speaker
One thing we'll link it in the show notes, but one of the publications that I really, really love is relatively new. It's called Off the Grid, Ultra-Low Pressure Drip Irrigation and Rainwater Catchment. So Dr. Rowell and Dr. Jacobson wrote this, and like I said, we'll put a link in the show notes for you here at UK. And what I like most about this is
00:40:14
Speaker
Irrigation can be really confusing when you're trying to figure out as someone who like still to this day gets a little confused by it and has built many an irrigation system. Understanding PSI, they're like, oh, well, what's the head that you have on this? And I'm just like, I don't know what that means. The one on my shoulders. I don't know a lot of these terms. This publication makes things easier. There's some good graphics in it and
00:40:41
Speaker
It puts the math out in a simple way so that by the time you finally get to the end, you know a little bit more about what you're talking about. But what it does talk about a lot is that low flow irrigation. So a lot of people who have gotten equip grants for high tunnels are being required to put on a gutter system with a tank.
00:41:00
Speaker
to be able to water their tunnel through that NRCS grant.
Low Flow and Low Pressure Irrigation Systems
00:41:05
Speaker
Or if you're just someone who wants to water your garden or your raised beds and you like the idea of having drip irrigation on them, you don't necessarily have to have your 35 foot drop like Ray is lucky enough to have. You can actually elevate your tank two to five feet. So that's something like three cinder blocks stacked on top of each other and you're putting your tank up on top of them.
00:41:27
Speaker
And you can actually do up to a quarter acre with this low flow drip irrigation and where you're only working with, you know, two PSI or something along those lines. And so even though drip tape really is meant for eight or more PSI, you can use it with two. And so we've, they.
00:41:47
Speaker
done the research on that, have some information that's available in this pub. And I just think that's awesome to be able to just turn the valve and water the tunnel or water the garden with a tank that's on a couple of cinder blocks.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, because your growing area might not be in proximity, right? Like where your municipal water hookup is, or you might not really have the infrastructure out there. So you can set up something quote unquote off the grid. Yeah, Brent, Brent Rowell, you know, one of the authors of the publication, Alexis just mentioned
00:42:20
Speaker
did some crazy stuff in Myanmar, sometimes referred to as Burma. And they did this stuff like he and others, I mean, they worked with like local manufacturers to support the development of materials needed to build these like bamboo towers. And then at the top of the tower, there was like a liner that was put into the
00:42:51
Speaker
into that and there's like this reservoir and then they were able to, you know, use a hand pump to pump water up and like, or maybe it was an animal driven or something like that. But anyway, so they used like treadles. So it was like a little foot thing that you, yeah, it's crazy. And it puts it up into the reservoir.
00:43:09
Speaker
And that is then this on demand source of water. Prior to this, the system was to fill up buckets that were on like a yoke with hanging down from a yoke and walk along and irrigate. It's like hundreds of thousands of of person dollars saved. Very, very cool. And that's like where I think he not like he learned that concept, but that was where he implemented it and kind of learned about and then came back to UK. And then that was when they wrote
00:43:40
Speaker
wrote that publication, which is pretty cool. Just that elevation difference thing, just to make sure in case anybody out there hasn't heard that before, talking about like 2.3 feet and one PSI. In theory, if you could put a thing of water 20.3 feet in the air,
00:43:59
Speaker
you could have 10 PSI from that at the spigot. And then what Ray's talking about then is that his field, his area that he's irrigating is even further down below that. And so you get that additional gain. And so bringing that rain barrel up off the ground is kind of all we're talking about. There was a new concept to me when I first came across it and I was like, so you're talking about literally raising this thing up off the ground, right? Like that's what we're talking about? Yeah.
00:44:25
Speaker
It doesn't matter if it's 10,000 gallons or 10 gallons, that ratio doesn't change. That math doesn't change. That 2.3 math over one foot does not change. We have a publication that you're talking about, has an illustration on the front of it that shows a dip before you go back up and then down a bigger hill. The reverse is true also. If you have a dip, you calculate
00:44:53
Speaker
that going the other way and subtract that off of your drop. So pretty simple math. Yeah. For reference, if you're like 10 PSI means nothing to me, which honestly been there. And so kind of there a little bit, your, your city water that's coming out of like your tap. So your hose on, on your house is usually around 30 PSI. So, you know, you can get, that's quite a lot of pressure that you can get
00:45:20
Speaker
Which checked mine at my home. We were having some issues and it was running 60 and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna need a new meter, Georgetown, because things are blowing up in my house. Yeah, I got a new meter out of it. I think they say the typical is 40 to 80. Yeah.
00:45:36
Speaker
Well, not according to Brent Rylenquist, Christo Jacobs, it's 30, so. It really makes me nervous when it gets high, yeah. That's just what the publication says. So let me just say it's a minimum of 30, maybe is a better way to say it, and that you can work with something a lot lower than that. So 10's pretty good.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah. So on that publication, you guys, what was the number you guys threw out that they were making an irrigation system work with what, two or three pounds? Is that what you guys said? Two or three. I mean, it was, it has some restrictions on it, you know? Yeah. Like a quarter acre. And it's slow.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, because it's like your interval your timing interval. Yeah. Or break it up into those smaller zones. Yeah. And then it really has to be kind of designed to take, you know, there can't be a little bit of a rise or anything like that. It has to all kind of. So you're really low pressures with like what Alexis said, you know, your house is like, you know, that much pressure, but it's amazing that you can work off of two to four
00:46:33
Speaker
I mean, much, much lower pressure. One to two is what they're saying. Yeah, it's really cool. It's basically, there has to be enough water to fill up the entire amount of drip line, right? Before it like runs out completely. To kind of like begin dripping everywhere consistently.
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah. So that's you, Ray, you said that this is something where if you are going to use low pressure, you're not going to use a pump. So you're on your rain barrel or whatever that is, you're going to need to leave that on for a lot longer, but it's drip irrigation. So you shouldn't need to manage that. So that's the beauty of it is that you can just turn it on and walk away.
00:47:11
Speaker
And you're going to want to, you know, put down that inch of water, you know, ideally most plants want about an inch of water a week. And so one way, if you're like, okay, Alexis, I don't really know what that means. That's okay. Take you a little dish, a bowl or something that's going to hold water, put it underneath, like where a plant would be, put it underneath your drip tape and
00:47:33
Speaker
leave your drip on and see how long it takes for you to get about an inch of water in that bowl like that's the most simple way there are much fancier ways much more math ways to do it but the easiest way is to do that and then you don't have to do any math and that's always great as a point of reference and it's got just a tiny bit of math we do have a publication that's got some kind of irrigation math in there but
00:47:55
Speaker
For instance, a 200 square foot garden to get that inch per week needs about 40 gallons a week. If that gives you kind of a starting point just to refer to. So a 55 gallon drum, you may like leave on until it's completely empty. That was my takeaway from that math, Lexus. If I had 200 square feet and then you could plant accordingly like Brett, who doesn't have a single container, but a series of containers, you could then increase your capacity to water.
00:48:25
Speaker
And I think it should, I mean, most of us kind of know this a little bit intuitively, but water weighs a lot. Each gallon is over eight pounds. So if you're working with a 300 gallon tote, if that thing's full, it weighs considerably more than a ton. When you're building something to put it on, think about that. I put a lot on on Annie earlier about the decision not to, but that was one of the main reasons why I didn't go with something bigger is that I didn't want to mess with
00:48:53
Speaker
engineering any sort of footers or anything like that. I just wanted to put it on some solid ground. Put it on the roof, you'll be golden. Exactly. I love the barrels now because you can connect them so relatively easy. It makes sense to have, if you need five of them, you just distribute that across and they feed into each other. I like that idea. If you don't have the space, it makes sense to have one bigger container, but
00:49:22
Speaker
For the barn, I'd like to have a couple that feed into each other, but I want to put one on the tunnel and greenhouse to water those plants in there. I'm thinking of doing a single that the gutters will feed into a single one because they sit right next to each other. It could be used for both.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah. So that's one decision. Maybe we started on very concrete. Maybe we can end on a very concrete consideration. Yeah. That linking of the barrels and the modular expandability was a big plus for me that I can kind of get for if I hate this, I've only gotten four. I haven't committed to thousands of gallons of capacity and et cetera. And one of the things that I agonized over, not really agonized, but thought about a lot was
00:50:13
Speaker
where to place the link between the barrels on the height of the barrels. Because if you put it at the top, then the first barrel has to fill up all the way before the second barrel will fill up. If you place it at the bottom, both barrels will fill up equally
00:50:35
Speaker
essentially, once it gets past the point of where you hook them up. But I could not get past the idea or my aversion to putting a penetration into the bottom part of the barrel. I just am too afraid. I don't trust like that. Who hurt you, Brett? Who hurt you? You can talk to Annie. I have the weirdest water and water damage and other related anxieties of anyone that I know. I have no idea why.
00:51:06
Speaker
Do you still have all the stickers from your youth? I had a nightmare last night that a pipe burst in the house and it flooded. Like I woke up and I was like, oh my, it didn't actually happen. Everything is utopian. Yes. Hashtag things we say over 30. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, but, but that was a decision. And so like I earlier, I said I linked him at the top. I think the more normal practice would be to link him at the bottom because the advantages. So when I'm pumping out of one of those barrels, if
00:51:35
Speaker
if one of them is full and the other one, or sorry, if they're both full and I'm pumping out a one of them.
00:51:40
Speaker
it will drain the first barrel first and then I'm going to have to move my Capri Sun sipper tube over to the other one manually. Whereas if I was pumping out of one and the thing was down low, it would lower the levels of both barrels at the same time. So I'd have to change it less frequently. So for my case, I exclusively made the decision. The same reason I chose to do the manual shutoff is just because I can see this breaking or leaking later on. And I don't want to deal with it. I'll deal with the other annoyance. But so that's just a,
00:52:11
Speaker
fewer moving parts, less complexity. That's yeah. Yeah. I will never forget the day my parents said to me, the more things you have, the more you have to take care of. And as an adult, I'm like, this is the worst. Like, we need new flashing on our chimneys. And I was like, God, I don't even want these. What were you thinking?
00:52:35
Speaker
I give you joy though. Tens of thousands of plants, you are their slave. Yeah, tens of thousands is an understatement. 11s of thousands. More of 11s of thousands. Thousands of thousands. I don't know, but that comes back to me with that. Well, I think if the people want to talk more about rain barrels,
00:53:01
Speaker
They need to let us know what kinds of topics they want us to cover with this. I think we covered the basics pretty good. I hope so. There are calculators out there for figuring out how much you're trying to catch and how much that might be. You could see monthly and annual average rainfalls to then put in perspective how frequently you might fill up just to get some sense of that.
00:53:29
Speaker
Overall, it was less intense than I was expecting it to be.
00:53:33
Speaker
To get it set up, I don't know. I tend sometimes to over, to think that it's going to be way bigger deals than it actually is. And so if you're thinking about it, what's that? I'm like, I'm the opposite. I'm like, this is going to be fine. I can totally do this in 15 minutes. I have this blind, like I can just, I can do anything. Like it's fine. I'm going to figure it out. It's not good. Power powers combined.
00:54:00
Speaker
She'll be in the middle. We need rain that we like touch together, yeah. Straw for mediocrity, halo.
00:54:09
Speaker
Sorry, Brett. Yeah, but if you if you all do rain barrels and you've got a cool setup, be sure to post a picture on Instagram and tag us. Yeah. Let us know. Let us know what other kind of episodes. I think so many cool systems. Yeah, I won't do that. I won't do the actual outro. I'll leave that to Alexis. Yeah. Well, we and we got this idea from one of our listeners emailed us and said, hey, I'm interested in this. And we were like, if you're interested in it, somebody else is too. You could say that we rolled out the barrel for you.
00:54:38
Speaker
We are also interested in it. We got a barrel of fun.
00:54:43
Speaker
All right, you guys. Well, uh, let us know for sure. So if you want to let us know, you can find us on Instagram at hort culture pod and you can send us a message on there with any ideas that you have. Uh, you can also email us at hort culture podcast at l.uky.edu. Uh, you can leave us a review and in the review you can say, Hey, really love all the cool things that you're doing. Ray is mocking me right now. I've got like this head thing going on. So much trouble. I forgot to get to you.
00:55:14
Speaker
You can leave us a review and say, hey, love this episode. We'd love to know more about this. And we love when you leave us reviews because it helps the algorithm and helps more people find us and want to listen to us. And, you know, that makes the people that that makes us happy and makes us our bosses happy that people actually listen to us. So all that good stuff. But.
00:55:34
Speaker
Anyways, thank you for being here with us today. We hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and join us next time for more cool plant stuff. Thanks guys. Have a great one.