This summer I had the necessity to irrigate the small vegetable garden and garden, so I used an old shelter for the wood with the tin roof tilted, I applied a gutter connected with a corrugated plastic pipe, to a tank. At the two ends of the corrugated pipe I made two filters to prevent leaves and other organic material end up in the thank. To realize the filters I used two types of net, a wide-mesh and the other narrow-mesh. To the side tank I made a core filter by the insertion of the narrow mesh in a plastic pot for plants and a pair of flower saucers modified appropriately to prevent to organic materials fall down in the tank. To the drain valve on the bottom of the tank has been mounted a long rubber tube to irrigate the garden and the neighboring garden.
SMALL REFLECTION ON ACTIVITY
During the realization of this little project, I thought if a similar solution was easy to apply also to the buildings of our cities. Assuming that all the roofs have a gutter I don’t see big problems of realization except perhaps in some cases, where part of the gutter is inside the walls of buildings or in historical center of our cities. In other areas of the city especially in the presence of new structures, industrial buildings, public buildings, schools and residential buildings with a private garden, I can only imagine the immense amount of water that could recover! The costs would be a few hundred euro for purchasing and to install the tank. It could be realize a secondary circuit of "second choice" water, with a special filtration system to be used for secondary uses such as irrigation of green areas and drains from the toilets of entire apartment buildings. All this activity can be considered exaggerated to save a "miserable" drop of water in the endless sea of consumption, but it would be an important signal, the water in a few years will take the place of oil in the list of resources on which we depend in a direct manner and in this case it is vital too!
The fine-mesh net is used to realize the filter side tank, the mesh wider (green) is inserted into the top of the gutter as a prefiltering. It is necessary to prevent leaves and pine needles fall down in the tank.
The flower saucer so modified and used serves to adapt the filter to the inlet port of the tank, the diameter of saucer therefore depends by the diameter of the fill port of the thank.
In this case the flower saucer inserted to one end of the corrugated tube serves to hold the tube centered in the filter core and to prevent foreign matters fall down into the thank.
Unfortunately, a series of clumsy clicks erased the only photo I had available of the project. I Have removed all for the winter period. I intend to do and insert again the photo when I will build again the whole kit next spring! I hope that the image makes the idea of what I have done!
Example of gutter filter to prevent that foreign objects fall down in the tank.
If the level of the floor of use is higher or at least and it does not allow an effective irrigation for natural fall, between the different solutions, you can use a pump operating with a normal drill.
