Greenhouse: GH bizz #2, 1 by Jayryunen

Jayryunen wrote:
This picture shows my minimalist set-up and my aspirations.... in front is the winery rain barrel, elevated on cinder blocks with a regular hose bib. I found an auger bit just the right size to make the hole and it allows me to simply screw in the hose bib and the seal is tight enough I haven't needed to caulk it. I've made several of these for friends. In the summer I tie a piece of fiberglass window screening around the top to keep bugs and mosquitoes out of the water. I've had this sucker freeze darn near solid, pushing ice out the top, in the winter and that hose bib hasn't cracked in 5 years... because the water can expand out the top.

Beside it is a trash can full of more rain water that I simply bucket from one to the other. You could attach several barrels in tandem with overflow hoses and they'd automatically fill, but I haven't done that because I have ASPIRATIONS... LOL

Which is what you see in the background. An 1100 gallon storage tank that will someday, eventually, hopefully this summer get hooked up to the gutters. (The lond delay has been due to trying to figure out how to best channel the overflow and whether I wanted both gutters to go to this tank or just one.) Like Los Gatos, we can get a lot of rain during certain seasons, and zip for months, and my well water is so hard we can't use soaker hoses but a summer before they clog hopelessly. I mean really, one could break a tooth on my well water.

There's all sorts of calculations to figure out how much water you receive and how much you need to help figure out how much storage is required... but to be honest, I didn't bother. It was more a matter of the pocketbook than anything for me. =0)

Jay