Hi there. My wife and I are building a garden this winter/spring and part of it will be a fairly large rainwater catchment system and a greenhouse. The garden will be about 2500 sq ft and will be mostly raised beds with some in ground. My wife is planning a mix of vegetables and flowers.
For the rainwater catch system we didn't want it to make our property look like a jungle gym playground with overhead pipes running all over the place. We wanted to build one that is mostly hidden and out of sight. From my research, using purpose built rainwater collection equipment for this project would bankrupt us. So we put this system together with off the shelf parts normally used for other things. The pumps are inexpensive and used for shallow wells and basement sumps. The irrigation side is all off the shelf lawn irrigation parts and the plumbing is mostly PEX and some PVC.
Today the area has been cleared of trees, leveled, retaining walls built, the greenhouse is complete, the rainwater collection system is complete, the rainwater delivery system is complete, the irrigation for the raised beds is in progress. My current task is building the raised beds and I'll post more on them as I get through it. Here are some pics to get you all up to speed
Under the brown lid is the sump where all of the rainwater from the shop roof ends up via underground pipes. There is a sump pump inside that pumps the water into the center tank, the level equalizes via the valves and pipes at the bottom of the tanks.
Under one of the round, green lids is this septic field diverter valve. When set in position I the water flows into the sump and is then pumped into the tanks automatically. When in position II the water flows out to the back of our property as it did before we added this collection system. It takes about 10" of rain to fill up our tanks, we get over 60" per year. We filled the tanks in less than 48 hours last month!
We installed 3 x 2500 gallon tanks and have 2 shallow well pumps (primary and backup) to pressurize the lines to both the 3 yard hydrants and 32 irrigation valves.
This is one of the irrigation controllers we're using, each handles 16 valves (or zones) and all schedules are configured via a smartphone. Each raised bed will be its own zone with drip irrigation used for the delivery.
This is our 12' x 16' glass greenhouse. It's a little harder to heat than a polycarbonate style but it sure looks a lot nicer. It has water from the rain system and electric and since this photo was taken now has lots of things growing inside!
The water system has been being tested all this month and it has performed great. We've been using it in the greenhouse and I even hooked up our power washer to one of the hydrants and used it to power wash the driveway while it was raining and we were collecting rainwater off the roof!
Next we start building the raised beds. My wife found some reclaimed material locally that I intend to use to build the raised beds, hopefully I'll make some progress this weekend, updates to come!
jaysOn - Looks like quite an involved project but knowing exactly what you want and careful planning seemed to have come to fruition for you both. Congrats on being on your way to gardening in your raised beds.
