Water Collection/Use

[hqueen13]

So in other words, one rain storm at 12,000 gallons would only be enough to cover one acre if the rain stopped.
Our "average" rainfall is supposed to be about 40" per year annually.

So how practical is this???

Now the other part of that is that we are looking towards the future of getting an indoor arena built, which would be MORE roof area to capture water. If we already have one cistern installed then, having a second one one for that structure could yield a great deal more water. Even if it were only 75' x 100' that would be another 7500 sq ft of roof to capture water.

 

[Mr.Andersson]

I'm thinking that watering would mainly occur during july/august? I still haven't double checked all my numbers. Possible delivery systems have my thoughts. I was thinking a cistern would be an expensive option. Above ground tanks, plumbed together, would surely be less expensive, which is why I was leaning towards "pond" I would love to see pictures, and how big of a hill are we speaking about? 22 acres does not look like alot, until you start talkin about watering, lol. Now thats a lot of water!
HarvestH2o.com

 

[hqueen13]

Above ground tanks would be less work, however, it would not be able to capitalize on the gravity situation that we have. I will try to get pictures this weekend, or maybe this afternoon if I have a few moments. The hill we are talking about is BIG, and steep. By big I suspect it is probably 30+ feet downward, and the slope is probably barely wider than it is deep (rise over run).
It would not take much to sort of half bury the cistern into the hillside and pipe the water from the barn straight into the cistern. Then it would require no electricity to operate, simply drive down to the bottom of the hill (which is not a problem with a piece of equipment if it is dry! LOL) and then fill with a hose, and then drive back up again.
Course the next issue is that if 12,000 gallons only covers one acre you'd have to have a pretty big tank for spraying, otherwise you'll waste a ton of gas just driving the water to and from the pastures. (a 500 gallon tank would take 24 trips to and from the pasture to spray 1" of water! Yikes!!)

 

[Mr.Andersson]

Above ground tanks would be less work, however, it would not be able to capitalize on the gravity situation that we have.
Course the next issue is that if 12,000 gallons only covers one acre you'd have to have a pretty big tank for spraying, otherwise you'll waste a ton of gas just driving the water to and from the pastures. (a 500 gallon tank would take 24 trips to and from the pasture to spray 1" of water! Yikes!!)

I may have made one mistake, given my formula, .62 gals per sq ft @ 1" depth, x 3000 sq ft, is 1860 gallons per inch of rainfall, thats what I get for looking at someone elses website. So, at 40" for the year is 75,000 gallons? Another site said a 5,600 gal cistern would be what we want, i'm not so sure about that. We are still in the discussion phase, so I hope you will forgive that mistake.

1", is weekly, I would say possibly 1/4", every 2nd or 3rd day. No more than 1" is neccessary per week.

I mistakenly divided 3000 by .50, not multiplied. The .50 represents the .62, but accounts for primary dumping & evaporation.

 

[hqueen13]

That is probably reasonable, Mr. Andersson - the 100,000 gallons that I calculated included the barn plus a second building that is something like 32' x 32' square. I have no idea how I would get the water down to the cistern from that building, but in the least it could be captured with above ground tanks if need be.

Did your mistake affect the amount of gallons per rain storm or the amount of gallons spread over an acre?? I'm a little confused.

If I can remember to do so I'll take pictures this weekend, I will be out there most of the weekend.

 

[Mr.Andersson]

That is probably reasonable, Mr. Andersson - the 100,000 gallons that I calculated included the barn plus a second building that is something like 32' x 32' square. I have no idea how I would get the water down to the cistern from that building, but in the least it could be captured with above ground tanks if need be.

Did your mistake affect the amount of gallons per rain storm or the amount of gallons spread over an acre?.

I belive my only mistake was the first! Average rainfall of 2", would yield 3,600 gals. I'm thinking, (scary) that storing march, april, may & june rainfall amounts, that would be a max of 16" of rain? That would be storage of 28,000 gals, which does not look like it will go very far, as far as watering fields. The building being planned, could yield 75,000 gals in the same 4 months.
I was not very clear about watering application, but a one time 1/4" watering would be 3,250 gals per acre.

 

[hqueen13]

I belive my only mistake was the first! Average rainfall of 2", would yield 3,600 gals. I'm thinking, (scary) that storing march, april, may & june rainfall amounts, that would be a max of 16" of rain? That would be storage of 28,000 gals, which does not look like it will go very far, as far as watering fields. The building being planned, could yield 75,000 gals in the same 4 months.
I was not very clear about watering application, but a one time 1/4" watering would be 3,250 gals per acre.

My father used to say that the only mistake he ever made was the one time he thought he made a mistake!

I'd have to go look up the average rainfalls to find out if 16" is appropriate for march through june. The only other thing I would say is that the tank would probably be able to work with quite a bit more than that. We have been known to have fairly wet falls, and have even have had a wet winter with almost no snow this last year, so the tank would be able to collect water throughout the year rather than just in the spring. I do see your point though that it would take a lot of water to be reasonable for "watering" the fields.

Here is a site I just found detailing averages by month: http://www.rssweather.com/climate/Maryland/Baltimore/ It appears that april is the driest month and september is actually wettest! I can attest to september, we often get "monsoons" that roll through that bring about a week of rain. This past year, we had hurricane Isabel crank through dropping about 4 or 5" of rain, then a week later we got hit by Lee's leftovers, and that dumped 7" of rain in a period of less than 24 hours (on top of the rain that had already fallen earlier in that week) I have never seen flooding like we had here! So being able to hold the water over from fall through winter would be highly beneficial.

 

[Summer98]

What happens when the cistern is full of water and it keeps raining? Does it overflow and spill out or what?