Guess, Just Guess

The rains set in Tuesday afternoon and that meant no work for me Wednesday. Even though I needed the hours, it did give me a chance to get some little things done in the shop.

First off I got the return air box done for the little DC fan I found in the back of that guys truck I talked about last time. This will sit under the bench and a flex hose will go through the wall and into the bottom of the Solar Beer Can Heater to increase its efficiency and heat the shop quicker. Now to hook it all up.




Like I said, the rain came in and I had to drain the first flush on the rain water harvesting system. I almost forgot about it because it has been so long since it really rained back to back.

I took a quick video of the process, but decided not to put it on here because I sounded like a dork so I found this frame in the video and snapped a photo of the gunk coming out of the pipe. Technology is amazing.
The photo is right when the cap came off and you can see how nasty the water is. If I didn't have a first flush on my rain water system then all that stuff from the roof would end up in my tanks making it where I would have to take them down once a year and clean it all out. If it was a small system it wouldn't be that bad, but draining and wasting almost 4000 gallons of water and then crawling inside two twelve foot tanks with only an eighteen inch man way would be tough.
Anyway, now you can see how important a first flush is on your Rain Water Harvesting system.

Guess what me and the wife did Tuesday Night. Oh come on, guess......
Nope,
Nope,
I would have liked too, but nope,

We went to a prepper party. Yea no kidding!
Some folks here in town held a quarterly preppers meeting and me and the wife got invited. How exciting is that?
I told myself on the way there to just sit, listen, smile and don't say much. The reason why was because I didn't want to come off as a know-it-all because after all, I don't know it all.

They had two different speakers. The first speaker hit on food storage and bug out bags and the other speaker was on EMP attacks, gun control and how all that ties into Fema camps. Great knowledgeable speakers and it was a wonderful time. I even picked up a couple of useful tips along the way.
See there, you can teach an old dog new tricks.       

After a hour and a half I just could not stand it anymore and had to start asking questions. They were harping on the one year food storage pretty hard at the end and I had to ask, "What will you do after that?"
With blank looks from the crowd the wife and I went on the explain how you have to have a way to restock your shelves when your one year runs out. Of course that led into how to use alternative energy to cook with, which led to water storage from the rain and so on. Before I realized it, me and wife had the rooms attention and questions were getting fired at us right and left about growing your own food, water filtration and so on. 
So now we are scheduled to be the speakers at the next meeting. Look what we went off and done. I really was going to stay quiet.

Got to meet some really nice folks and I look forward to the next one.

Other than that, that's all I got for now.   

Rain Water Harvest System With A First Flush

The couple of days I got home before dark I was able to do some work on the rain water harvesting system.

Even though I had one in place, it was a make shift system and I was loosing many, many gallons of water every time it rained.
Plus I did not have a "First Flush" system in place to catch the contaminates before it dumped into the tanks.

What contaminates you ask, after all it's clean rain water right?

My house like most is an asphalt shingled roof and every time it rains some of the particles from the shingles wash off into the gutter making their way to the bottom of the storage tanks.
Plus there is the dirt and dust that collects on the roof from the normal everyday wind. We also live in a farming community way out in the boondocks where they still spray the fields with airplanes. Even though they are careful, I am sure some of the chemicals still settle on the roof tops of our houses.

 That is where the First Flush system helps out. It will collect around the first five to seven gallons of rain water and then bypass the flush system leaving the bad water in the pipe and dumping the clean water into the tank. The lingering heavier particles will still be able to fall to the bottom even during the bypass stage.
This system will reduce the build up of foreign matter in the tanks and increase the quality of the water.  

 The bypass is made up of 3" pipe, two 2"X3" adapters, a 3" clean out, a 2" sweeping "T" and an empty water bottle. This picture shows the bottle being placed in the bottom of the pipe then clean out cap is screwed back on finger tight.

When the water fills the pipe, the bottle floats and when it reaches the 2"X3" reducer, it clogs the hole and the water is bypassed into the tank. After the water is bypassed any left over heavy particles will hit the bottle and still sink to the bottom of the pipe.

After the rain has ended, all I have to do is unscrew the clean out cap on the bottom and drain the pipe.

Even though every rain water harvesting system should have a first flush, it will not collect 100% of everything. This water will be filtered enough to put on the gardens and to be used for the animals, but for the bathhouse I still want it to be filtered a little more.
Before it goes into the bathhouse, the water will be filtered using a hot tub filter.

Just wanted to share this. I thought somebody might need it in the future.