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Using a Rain Barrel to Conserve Water
Conserving water is probably the the primary reason you are looking to purchase a rain barrel. The next big question is: What do you do with the water after you collect it in your rain barrel? You can use rainwater from your rain barrel for multiple purposes such as watering your plants, flushing your toilets, taking a shower or a bath, or even for drinking water. The problem is processing and delivering the rainwater from the rain barrel to the desired use. If it happens to be drinking water it has to be filtered and purified. If it is going to be used inside your house it has to be carried or piped inside the house. The most practical use for rainwater from your rain barrel seems to be landscape irrigation.
Rain Barrels for Use in Landscape Irrigation
In order to use rainwater from your rain barrel for landscape irrigation, you need to filter and pressurize it. The degree of filtering depends on the emission device used to apply the water from your rain barrel. If it is an impact sprinkler it doesn’t need to be filtered as well as a spray head, and if it happens to be drip irrigation it really needs to be filtered. The pressure required also depends on the emission device used to apply the water from your rain barrel. If it is an impact sprinkler it needs more pressure, a spray head needs less pressure, and drip irrigation requires even less pressure. But still, drip irrigation from the rainwater in your rain barrel needs at least 25PSI at the source so that all of the drippers perform properly.
The next consideration is: what is the most efficient type of landscape irrigation system to use with rainwater collected in a rain barrel? This is of critical importance because after you have carefully collected rainwater in your rain barrel, you want to make it last as long as possible until the next rainfall occurs. Drip irrigation is the most efficient form of landscape irrigation out of your rain barrel because the water is delivered right to the root zone with minimal run-off and evaporation. Plus, you are only watering the plants you want so you will discourage weed growth. The result is a better landscape and fewer weeds.
After all of this consideration the best choice to utilize water collected from a rain barrel is drip irrigation. It requires less pressure and is much more efficient than other forms of landscape irrigation. The only drawback is that it requires much better filtering than other forms of landscape irrigation from a rain barrel.
Now that we have determined that the best way to utilize the water in your rain barrel is to use drip irrigation, we need to consider what kind of rain barrel should you purchase? If you have determined that you want to irrigate from your rain barrel with drip irrigation, then you need a pump and a filter. The ideal rain barrel would be able to contain the pump and the filter inside the rain barrel. It would also be a good idea if the rain barrel were equipped with a switch that would turn the pump off if the rain barrel ran out of water.
The Automatic Rain Barrel
Fortunately, there is a product from the Filtrific Company called a Flotender that incorporates all of these features in a rain barrel. A Flotender functions as an automatic rain barrel. A Flotender collects rainwater, stores rainwater, filters rainwater, and pressurizes and pumps rainwater into a drip system. This turns a rain barrel into an automatic rain barrel. Now you can really make good use of the rainwater from your rain barrel. Save water and save money on your water bill by using an automatic rain barrel.
Up to 70% of residential water use goes to landscape irrigation – on average 32% nationwide. If we can put our rainwater to use watering our yards think of how we can have a positive impact on our world.
To really start using your automatic rain barrel properly, you need to learn how to address some of the challenges of using rainwater from a rain barrel to water your landscape. The biggest problem is that rainfall does not occur when you need to water so the water from your rain barrel gets depleted waiting for rain to occur. This is why using drip irrigation from your rain barrel makes sense. It delivers the rainwater right to the roots of your plants. The soil acts like a sponge absorbing the rainwater from your rain barrel in and around the roots of your plants. This in a sense increases the capacity of your rain barrel. As it rains, the rainwater in your rain barrel gets pumped out to the root zone of your plants and absorbed into the soil. Then when it stops raining and the water in your rain barrel gets depleted you can go longer between rainfalls.
Plug your automatic rain barrel into a timer on the outlet and set it on a schedule once the season has changed out of the rainy times. Let it run every other day for ten minutes until the rain barrel is pumped dry. After that monitor the water in your soil and before it really starts to dry out, switch the drip system from your rain barrel to your faucet. Put a timer on the faucet so that you water in regular intervals to keep the ground from drying up around the roots of your plants. After it rains again and your rain barrel gets replenished you can switch back to watering from the rain barrel again.
With a drip irrigation system operating from an automatic rain barrel you are saving drinking water, and you are saving drinking water by using it more wisely when there isn’t any water in your rain barrel. Your landscape will look better as well, because the plants will be healthier with regular watering. You will have to do less weeding because the ground between your plants will dry out and discourage weed growth.
You can even make your automatic rain barrel bigger and set the whole system in the ground. Now you start to move from a rain barrel to rainwater harvesting.
The rain barrel concept is still there but the rainwater harvesting system can really be incorporated into a complete irrigation system.
The rain barrel is a great idea, but now is the time to advance the rain barrel concept to the next level and really start conserving our drinking water and improving the landscape around our homes with an automatic rain barrel. A Flotender turns a regular rain barrel into an automatic rain barrel for a drip irrigation system. A solution to our nation’s water shortage.
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