Having arranged the water storage for garden use, I noticed that there were other down pipes that could possibly reduce the amount of water caught. If I could reduce run off without increased chances of flooding, we should be able to collect more water per down pour.
The idea is that if water could be dammed at two points, we could increase the volume of water able to be drained into the barrels.
The catchment area is approximately 150 square meters.
The spouting is 5cm deep before it overflows into the house, and the dam wall is 2cm, which means that in a significant rain event the water can spill over.
With our summer looming and the cost of domestic water increasing we have been increasing the amount of water collection and storage.
We have a water diverter on one primary down pipe that first fills a 1000 lt tank, this over flows then to 4 x 200 lt barrels. Additionally we have a 300 lt barrel that collects water from our shed.
The black barrels are gravity feed from the larger tank, via a 13mm plastic pipe that only starts filling the black barrel when the 1000 lt tank is 75% full.
The two black barrels are connected together and have plastic pipes that drip line to fruit trees at key points. Into these barrels a nutrient mix is added.
The two blue barrels have taps on them to manually decant water for buckets. The two blue barrels only fill when the primary tank is full.