Irrigating your Garden from your Rain Barrel

With Spring right around the corner, many people are planning out their gardens. A major component of a future garden plan is figuring out how to irrigate. Installing a Rain Barrel is a great place to start. Not only is it a source for free water, but it is also clear of chemicals, such as chlorine and flouride, that are often present in city tap water. Your plants will thank you for giving them pure water to drink.

Once you have you a Rain Barrel and it's collecting water, the next thing to figure out is the best method to get that water to your plants. Here is a list of irrigation tips to maximize your precious collected rainwater.

Soil Preparation

-Soils may be sandy and gravely which hurts water retention, or they may have high clay content which can retain too much water. Adding organic material such as compost to your soil will help stabilize either extreme and create a moistiure balanced environment for your plants' roots.

-Prepared beds are ideal for root mobility. Individual planting holes can restrict your plants' roots, thus restricting access to water. Take the time to prepare an entire bed and watch your plants flourish.

-Be sure to mulch. Mulch will help hold moisture that would otherwise evaporate and will also help moderate your soil temperature.

Water Where It Matters

-Many people assume that irrigating your garden involves a hose and spray nozzle working with 45-50 pounds of water pressure. However, this is a perfect example of how not to water your garden. First, you will waste a large amount of water. Much of the water coming out the nozzle will not make it to your plants roots. Second, continually soaking your plants' leaves with water puts them at risk for certain fungal disease. Finally, unless you're using a sprinkler, you must stand there and hold the hose, which is precious time you could be doing something else.

-A soaker hose or drip irrigation system is the best method to water your garden. These methods deliver water right the base of the plant (exactly where you want it), getting right to the roots. As opposed to a spray nozzle, you're giving your plants a slow, steady drink of water that will penetrate deep below the roots. This, in turn, encourages the roots to grow deeper making for a healthier plant. It is important when choosing a soaker hose to use with your rain barrel that you choose a soaker hose that works with low pressure systems, such as this soaker hose here. 

A Few Other Tips

-Water when needed. If rain is in the forecast, hold off on watering your garden. Overwatering can decrease oxygen levels in your soil and can cause root rot, killing your plants.

-Water in the mornings. This will decrease the amount of water that evaporates. Also, if you water with a hose and nozzle (which I advise against), this will give your plants leaves time to dry off, decreasing the risk of fungal disease.

-Pull out the weeds! All those pesky weeds in your garden are drinking water that your lovely, food-producing plants could be drinking. Eliminate the competition.

Happy Gardening!

Restoring an old cistern

   If you're reading this, chances are you just discovered an old brick or stone cistern in your yard. Perhaps you hit a cast iron cap? Or maybe you were out in the yard and noticed a small hole and, as you dug around, noticed that hole got deeper and deeper, and that there were bricks lining the hole? 

Cisterns were a huge part of early infrastructure. It was commonplace – especially in the north – to incorporate a cistern when a new home was constructed pre-1920. In fact, I can almost guarantee that homes built here in Columbus, Ohio by or before 1920 had a cistern or a hand-dug well on-site, and the cistern was probably made from brick, was hand-dug, and was made into a sphere (typically proportional in size to the roof from which it was harvesting rain). We ourselves have come across and/or been inside more than 50 old cisterns within Columbus city limits alone. 

So what are your options if you discover an old cistern? 

Old cisterns can be relatively easy to restore if the following are true:

   1) It is not full of debris;

   2) The downspouts are still connected to the existing downspout drains; and

   3) The cistern is still water tight.

Typically, though, none of those three things are true with old cisterns we come across, in which case it can be a very labor intensive process to get the cistern back up-and-running.

If none of the above three items are true for your tank, then it is most likely going to be less expensive to fill in your existing cistern and replace it with a new tank. However, if the cistern does not have much debris in it, then the most labor-intensive process can be crossed off the list (whew!). 

If you can see inside the tank, then the next thing to check is whether or not downspouts are still running into it. The easiest way to do this is to simply bring a garden hose to the downspout that is closest to your cistern, and, if the downspout runs into a pipe that leads underground, run the water and let it drain straight into that pipe. Let it run for a few minutes, then go to the cistern and listen for incoming water. If nothing, then try another downspout. If nothing again, then chances are good that your downspout drains no longer tie into your cistern, in which case new drainage will have to be run.

If you do have water draining in, then the third and final thing to check is whether the tank is holding water. To do this, fill the tank to a visible water level. Measure, then measure again, and write down the confirmed measurement. Wait a day and take a new measurement. If the two measurements are the same, you're in luck again! If they are not, then your tank walls need to be re-sealed or lined. Re-sealing or lining your cistern is a somewhat DIY-friendly project, and we carry several product lines that help with this process, including our own customized cistern liners made from flexible potable-grade PVC or PE fabric. 

Once the tank is sealed and the downspouts are draining to it, the last step will be establishing a way to draw the water out of the tank. Typically, our customers use electric pumps for this, but we also have helped a lot of folks restore that old-fashioned look by installing our line of manual hand pumps. 

For more information, please contact us today and we can help guide you through the process and get you the products you need to make your job easy, safe, and cost-effective. And, as always, thanks for reading!

How to Prevent Your Pump From Burning Up

Electric pumps are a beautiful thing. My great-grandfather and grandpa would spend days in South Dakota installing a single windmill pump for a water well. Now, it usually takes us an hour at the most to install an electric well/cistern pump... all with flow/pressure results that are much more reliable and impressive than my great-grandfather could've ever imagined. 

Yet, as great as they are, electric pumps can be a headache (at best) if and when they burn up. A quality electric pump should last upwards of 15 years of continual household use. There are certain precautions you can take to ensure that your pump lives out its fullest potential. 

First, why does a pump burn up? Typically, pumps die on us because they ran dry. In other words, the cistern or well ran out of water, but the pump kept running... and running... and running. Pumps are designed so that incoming water, as it passes through the pump body and the impellers, acts as a cooling agent to keep the pump's electric motor cool. Without water, the motor runs hot, and as it heats up, impellers start to warp, bearings start to give, and the motor starts to seize. 

The best way to prevent your pump from burning up, then, is to prevent it from ever running dry (and, by the way, this tutorial is true for both above-ground jet pumps and submersible pumps). There are a few different ways of accomplishing this:

1) A Normally-Open Float Switch - A float switch is just what it sounds like: a floating switch. Picture a light switch that rides the water level. When the water level is high, the switch is up and the power is on. When the water level is low, the float switch drops down and turns the power off. There are two types of float switches: Normally closed and normally open. One turns the power off when the water level is down (normally open) and open turns power on when the water level is down (normally closed... generally used to turn on a light to warn of low water level). If you want to absolutely guarantee that your pump will never run dry, interrupt your pump's power supply with a normally open float switch and set the switch so that it turns the switch "off" when the water level is still just above your pump's intake. (By the way, we carry a pump that has a built-in float switch).

2) A Low-Pressure Cut-Off Pressure Switch - A pressure switch is the most popular method for controlling a pump (automatically turning it on and off). There is an alternative pressure switch – one that has a toggle-switch on the side that is influenced by low pressure situations. Specifically, when the water pressure dips below 12 PSI, the toggle switch disconnects the pump's circuit and shuts the pump off. 12 PSI is significant because a functioning water pump (one that is appropriately sized) does not just dip down to 12 PSI unless something else is going on – and, often times, we can assume that "what's going on" is that the pump has started to draw air into its line and is therefore struggling to build pressure. Installing a low-pressure cut-off switch definitely does a great job at saving pumps (especially above-ground jet pumps). However, it also does a great job at being a bit of a hassle for the homeowner, mainly due to the fact that, in order to get your pump running again, you have to manually pull up on the toggle switch and hold it until your pump builds up pressure again. However, if you're looking for a cheap and easy pump-saving solution, a low-pressure cut-off switch may be just your ticket.

3) A Pumpsaver – Pumpsavers are electronic sensors that detect amperage draws. When a pump draws air (i.e., when the tank is low), a pump pulls higher than normal amperage. A pumpsaver will detect that differential, and will go through a shutdown mode of the pump circuit. Initially, the pumpsaver will run through a test mode, shutting down for a few seconds and then turning back on to see if the abnormal power draw is still present. If it is, the pumpsaver will go through another shutdown mode and will continue a small cycle before shutting power down completely, at which case the pumpsaver has to be manually overridden in order to turn back on. Pumpsavers are excellent products and definitely do a great job at protecting pumps. However, this is the most expensive option.

Thanks for reading!

How to Build a Rain Barrel

Rain barrels are the best, fastest, and simplest way to start collecting rainwater for your home. In our 10 years in business, we have seen a lot of, shall we say, "troublesome" designs when it comes to rain barrels and rainwater catchment. We worked long and hard to come up with a good design for making rain barrel construction simple and DIY-friendly. That is why we developed a rain barrel construction and installation kit that allows for its user to construct their very own rain barrel in less than 5 minutes.

Our kit is so effective that This Old House picked one up and developed an online tutorial for making a rain barrel. See their video here.

We made a few videos of our own. We hope you'll find them helpful! For more information, please visit our website: http://www.rainbrothers.com