Finally had a good day to make a video of the rain barrel and compost tea system. There have been several nice days in the past few weeks – but I also needed to get some rain to demonstrate the barrels! So we had a good storm come through a few days ago – which then allowed me to get this video made.
This is the last video on the rain barrel system. The system now has 12 55-gallon drums – for a total water capacity of 660 gallons. All of the water from a 24×24 foot garage roof is diverted into the system. There are five downspouts on our approximately 50×24 foot house, so two of those were plugged up – and then one of them was diverted over to the garage roof (since the roof of the house is higher than the garage). So hopefully with about one inch of rain, the barrels will be filled up.
Under the rain barrels, there are another four containers that will be used to brew compost tea. I have a large 2-inch ball valve that separates nine of the rain barrels from three. I’ll close this off – then turn on a smaller ball valve to release water from the three barrels down to the compost tea brewing system. Once the three rain barrels are empty, then a small 1/6-HP pump will be used to pump the compost tea back into the three rain barrels – then the large 2″ ball valve will be opened. By doing so, this will make a 1-part compost tea to 3-parts water mixture that will be delivered directly to the garden irrigation system.