Using a hose with a rain barrel--

[SKR8PN]

It looks to low to me. Is it working better now that it is full? You may need to empty it and raise it up quite a bit more. Remember that town water tanks are VERY high to get more water pressure without a pump.

Yup. The reason your flow stops when you raise the hose to bucket height, is water cannot run UPHILL. Raise the container up a few feet or lower your buckets down to ground level. Or both....

 

[Denim Deb]

OK, I'm going to hijack this thread. I want to put some barrels by the barn to get the run off from the roof. It will be a big help since the pasture will get extremely muddy, especially right by the barn. Is there some type of formula for figuring out how many gallons you get per square foot per inch of rain?

 

[big brown horse]

Thanks everyone for your input. I will raise it up a few more feet if possible and shorten the hose.

DenimDeb, I don't know how to figure that out. I can say that my mini barn is 10 x 20 (ok, mini stalls) and in 24 hours of medium to light rain my 85 gallon trough was overflowing.

I also have a wood shed about 10 x 15 that fills up two 55 gallon rain barrels in a really short period of time....say about a day also. This is water for the dogs, chickens, ducks and garden. (I have hoses on them too, but they run down hill and work great.)

 

[big brown horse]

Hey Denim Deb, I found this on the internet:

"During a typical moderate storm, over 700 gallons of water will run off the average roof, an area of about 1,200 square feet. That same roof will shed over 5,000 gallons of water from April to August."

I have a seasonal pond in the back of my property that all of my house's run off water drains into...it is a beautiful pond in the fall-spring months. If I have to I can get water from that for the farm animals.

 

[patandchickens]

Deb -- figure out the area of your roof in square inches. Note that what you really need is the area of the FOOTPRINT of your roof (equals the footprint of your building, enlarged by whatever the roof overhang is). Multiply feet wide by feet long, then by 144 to get area in square inches.

A gallon is about 232 cubic inches. Thus if you divide your "area in square inches" number by 232 it will tell you how many gallons your roof will collect from a 1" rainfall.

To calculate water collection from other size rainfalls, the easiest thing is to calculate the 1" rainfall version then multiply by half (for a 0.5" rainfall) or whatever else

(example: a 10x10-footprint chicken coop would collect [10x10x144]/232 = 62 gallons from a 1" rainfall)

Pat

 

[big brown horse]

Thanks Pat!

I just filled up two 5 gal horse buckets within the time it took me to muck one of the two stalls. I just unhooked the buckets and brought them down to the hose's level. I also took off the sprayer (what was I thinking?). The pasture's 150 gal trough is way down the hill so I'm not worried about the hose working for that.

It just takes a little extra work, but I'm fine with it until summer comes around and the rains dry up. By then, my rain barrel/trough system will be empty. (It is too full to move right now!)

 

[Denim Deb]

Deb -- figure out the area of your roof in square inches. Note that what you really need is the area of the FOOTPRINT of your roof (equals the footprint of your building, enlarged by whatever the roof overhang is). Multiply feet wide by feet long, then by 144 to get area in square inches.

A gallon is about 232 cubic inches. Thus if you divide your "area in square inches" number by 232 it will tell you how many gallons your roof will collect from a 1" rainfall.

To calculate water collection from other size rainfalls, the easiest thing is to calculate the 1" rainfall version then multiply by half (for a 0.5" rainfall) or whatever else

(example: a 10x10-footprint chicken coop would collect [10x10x144]/232 = 62 gallons from a 1" rainfall)

Pat

Guess I'm going to need more than 1-55 gallon barrel. The roof is about 40' x 10' at the very least.

But, thanks for the info! That's the kind of formula I needed. No one else that I asked had a clue.

 

[patandchickens]

Guess I'm going to need more than 1-55 gallon barrel. The roof is about 40' x 10' at the very least.

Well, remember you do not HAVE to catch all the roof water. You can just let the excess overflow (preferably thru an actual overflow spout that is plumbed to some downspout or drainage pipe, so the water will go where you want and in an organized way)

But, thanks for the info! That's the kind of formula I needed. No one else that I asked had a clue.

If you ever meet my 9th grade math teacher Mrs Alfred (e.t.a. - who would be a jillion years old now), tell her one of her students remembered something from class LOL (The architecture of the calculation, not the cu inches per gal number, which like the rest of Modern Man I googled up )

Pat