PARK–water management
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Paige Erb's idea with a slight offset to the south.
- Illustration of Paige Erb’s idea of situating the drianage pipes directly over the living wall.
'Drawing' of Dorothy Skowrunski's rain barrel idea
HAVE IDEAS–please share KNOW SOMEONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE INVOLVED-please send this on
OK. Here’s our list of water management issues to solve
- The water from the roof drains into a single 40ft long trough on the south side of the building. We need to deliver the water to the west side of the building. What will keep the water from spilling over/splashing out as the trough makes a 90° angle turn to the west side?
- How will the diverted water be “spread out” to avoid eroding a hole at the mouth of the downspout?
- How much water do we need to collect and store to irrigate the 36ftx4ft living wall planted with succulents and 3,000sqft of sod. FYI 1cuft=8.5gal of water.
- How will the water from the cistern/rain barrels be delivered to the living wall and sod areas?
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When we first talked about a rain garden and living wall, we thought how in the heck are we going to contain the water for irrigation?…how can we collect and save rain water off the old building’s gutters. Hmmmmmm….. typically a home owner just uses a barrel, or large garbage can to collect water from a gutter…. but we need a really big container to hold the water for such a large space as well as being prepared for hot dry spells during the summer….. soooo why not a giant rain barrel….one that would be super high and be attach to the building with strong strapping of some sort. How about one of those giant corrugated black drain pipes like they use for road drainage??…. you could stand it up on end and attach it to the building….. they make end covers for them so you could close up each end to contain the water….hmmmmm just might work??
Dorothy Skowrunski
How about this? I spent some time scouring the internet–amazing tool that it is a photo of, believe it our not, a big culvert drain used as a giant two-story rain barrel strapped to the side of a house. http://www.relocalize.net/peakmomenttravels You have to scroll almost half way down the page -it seems like forever, to find it.
See above ‘drawing’ of how this might look on the side of the Gayle I. Smith Building. Great idea! Looks like it will need an engineer to do some structural drawings.
Anne
My idea is to first cut a weep hole in the new split-faced block wall parapet, approx 8″x16″, large enough to allow water to be diverted midway off the rubber roof into a large trough hanging from the face of the block wall. The trough would have weepholes as well that would allow for water to be delivered as needed to supply our living wall and natural earth basin at the base of the wall. If you calculate the water needed to supply the living wall and the rain garden basin we can calculate how many cubic inches of rain fall we need to handle and determine the sizes of the trough and diverter.
Certainly water diverted from half the roof would be plenty for our needs. Soil and Water Conservation’s estimate for amount of water per inch of rain off that roof has been increased to 6,800 gallons. Not to mention we’d save having to route the water such a distance from the back of building.
I’m imagining a waterfall/waterwall coming from all those weepholes during a nice rain. But I’m worried about too much water hitting the living wall during a downpour–one of the major wall challenges will be keeping the growing medium and plants vertically in place.
So I’m starting to see a cross between your idea and Dorothy’s. What about instead of one big drainage pipe we connect a lot of smaller pipes to the weepholes? Some pipes could drain directly into the rain garden basin (which I think of as the sod and tree plantings.) Some pipes could be sealed off and spigotted for storage and later irrigation use. I’ve posted a new drawing and find I love all the vertical pipelines going up the wall – I’ve spaced them 16″ from center to center, mirroring the studs on the back of the platform wall. Helps to make visual sense of those walls I think.
Is it possible to move the drainage pipes directly behind the living wall to add vertical length?
Just posted two drawings to reflecting Paige Erb’s idea. Drawing 1 has all the pipes over the living wall. Drawing 2 splits the difference- some pipes over the living wall to make it feel tall and pipes running all the way to the ground to divert water into the rain garden areas, i.e. sod and trees.
OK. We can’t see the living wall. I’ll attempt a drawing from the sidewalk later today so we can get a better idea of how the green of the living wall will relate to the pipe. Paige Erb, a member of the Coshocton Youth Foundation has started a Park Hotel Conservation Project under 21 group on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Park-Hotel-Conservation-Project-under-21-group/108331485874140?ref=ts
I like having the pipes directly behind the wall, we would want them elevated ABOVE the wall so we can use all the water they would contain. The wall could be designed to help support the pipes, or maybe it’s easier to mount them on the wall. We could support the pipes on additional pipes below them. 9′ pipe sections could be buried in the ground about 3-1/2 feet and raise the water collection pipes above the wall. A standard pipe joint could hold the two pipes together. This would about double the cost of the pipes but seems like an easy and safe way to support the weight of the water. If we have a lot of pipes we can trap them together and would need very few bolts into the wall, if any. Might get wasps and other nests in between the pipes.
Some attempts at answering the questions at the top of the page:
* The water from the roof drains into a single 40ft long trough on the south side of the building. We need to deliver the water to the west side of the building. What will keep the water from spilling over/splashing out as the trough makes a 90° angle turn to the west side?
—- we could get the water into a closed pipe before it gets to the corner (drop it down from the existing trough/gutter.
* How will the diverted water be “spread out” to avoid eroding a hole at the mouth of the downspout?
—- Flow rates will be much reduced by the collection tank and distribution hoses/troughs, but if erosion is still a concern it’s easy to wrap rocks in some wire or plastic mesh and have the water hit these on the way out of the pipes/troughs. Mesh can be galvanized (rustproofed) or, if plastic, UV-resistant grades should be available.
* How much water do we need to collect and store to irrigate the 36ftx4ft living wall planted with succulents and 3,000sqft of sod. FYI 1cuft=8.5gal of water.
—- I’ve put lots of calculations over on the “Structural Considerations” page since the amount of water capacity needed is what drives everything else. I’ll be revising them again in the next few days, I think the estimates are too high. Does anyone have ideas on how many days or weeks of water we need to store? I guessed 1.8 weeks for no particular reason, and that drives up the capacity.
—- I checked several internet sources and they all agreed 1 cu ft = 7.48 gal of water. Is there a reason for using 8.5 gal factor used above? Sorry, I’m new at this and don’t know everyone involved and their backgrounds, and where some of the numbers are coming from.
* How will the water from the cistern/rain barrels be delivered to the living wall and sod areas?
—- I recommend using small feeder/soaker/drip hoses with a small ball valve for each destination so we can balance & adjust flow rates. If we go with many large pipes instead of a single collection tank for storing water, the pipes can be split into groups by purpose, then we need a way to adjust flow INTO these pipes to balance it out. Lots of valves add lots of costs and also the need to climb up and turn them….
Ryan Medley, Soil and Water Conservation District Technician, went with me to the Park Hotel lot this morning to discuss our project. The goal of the SWCD involvement with this project is to divert storm water (water from the roof) back into the ground. We would also like the public to understand why this is important (education). We feel there are some challenges getting the water from the roof to your wall or lawn area. As Jason said at our committee meeting, the gutter goes in the wrong direction and would need to be diverted to bring the water to the front of the building. This could be done either with underground pipe or something on top of the roof. Ryan’s suggestion would be to bury the pipe under the ground and run the water into a cistern that you would then have the ability to pump water either by a timer or switch or your could install a hydrant.
We would also like to discuss the possibility of using the opposite corner from the living wall as a true “rain garden” site. There is a pipe from the building (Antique Mall) that could be easily diverted to the corner and we could install a small rain garden with signage that would explain how the public could do the same thing at home. The living wall is more elaborate and is going to be difficult to show how it can be duplicated at home. We are willing to design and install this small rain garden at our time and expense. Our office will assist with the living wall project in any way possible but the more “natural” we can keep the project the better.
By the way, we recalculated the amount of water coming off the roof, the correct number would be 3800 gallons per inch of rain.
I took a closer look a lot of numbers and assumptions. I’ll leave out the math this time, if anyone wants to take a look at it please let me know, I can send the spreadsheet!
What we need to water:
90 gal/wk — Living Wall @ 1″ water per week
621 gal/wk — Sod @ 1″ water per week, excluding what it gets from direct rainfall
100 gal/wk — Trees, 4 @ 25 gal/wk each (this was on Answers.com, any better guesses?)
15 gal/wk — additional for cleaning, spot-watering, etc.
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826 gal/wk total
Roof provides 3,600 gallons per inch of rain, which is 3,376 gal per week in driest month
of the season from April – September). We have plenty of water in spite of my earlier worries (I hope I didn’t lose all credibility yet!).
If we want to store up to 10 days of water, we’ll need storage capacity of 1180 gallons.
If we want to use many PVC pipes for storage, we can use Schedule 40 pipe and it should be painted a light color to protect it more from UV sunlight. This pipe seems to be sold in 10-ft lengths. Here are the characteristics for some different diameters:
8 10 12 Pipe Diam (in)
56 80 105 Weight of each pipe (lbs)
271 418 586 Weight per filled pipe (lbs)
26 41 58 Capacity per pipe
46 30 21 Number of pipes needed
Larger diameters are available but the pipe weight goes up and up. I don’t want anyone getting hurt during installation and the 12″ pipes are already over 100 lbs each. A large number of pipes would let us get creative in how they’re organized. They could be in clusters or staggered rows for example.
We’ll need additional pipes to get water from roof to storage system. These could go underground as Ryan suggested in Deb’s note above — they might always have water in them but does that matter? Each new rain would push more water up into the storage system, as long as the roof is higher than where we store the water. Storage needs to be higher than the wall. Pipes could all be connected together at top and bottom so they would “share” the water between them (but one leak and they all go dry!). We could have three or more drains from the storage system to feed to sod, trees & wall. Each of these could have its own shutoff valve, or we could have one shutoff valve before the split and several options for directing the right amount of water to each destination.
Another thought: we should have a two-stage storage system. Bottom stage would hold enough for one watering. Top would hold any excess, and when full the overflow would drain to somewhere else. When it’s time to water, close a valve between the to stages and open the valve below the bottom stage. Watering could take half an hour to several hours (we need to figure out flow rates vs. erosion, etc.) and person doing the watering could leave. When watering is done, close the bottom valve and open the valve between the two stages. Bottom stage will fill up as much as possible and new rain will fill them both. Repeat as needed….
The two-stage idea means some pipes will need to be above others. We could mount them at angles instead of straight up and down to allow two sets of 10′ pipes in a 12′ vertical space. More room for creativity!
I created a schematic diagram of how I think the watering system could work – based on ideas above. It’s in a .PDF file and can be downloaded from:
http://www.zumodrive.com/share/4MBNZGViMT
Any questions, suggestions or other alternatives we can look at???