Wednesday Walk & Make Me Smile Challenge - Catching Rain & Sunflowers

It's raining it's pouring
The old man is snoring...
This is the kind of weather we've been having for just over a week now; off and on, on and off; so I have not been able to get much walking done!

I will however take you on a rainy walk through our garden and show you how we installed our new rainwater tanks; thankfully we got this done in time before the first heavy rains fell!
And fall it did; came down in buckets! Pool is filled to overflowing as were the new rainwater tanks.

Imagine all this rainwater going to waste down the drains and eventually flooding the properties below even though we have a good stormwater drainage system in place. We have massive soak pits which serve their purpose as it slows down the surge of water, but it still goes to waste!

I was quite surprised at how much there is to installing a rainwater tank - honestly thought it's just a matter of buying a water tank and connecting to the down pipes, but there's a lot more to it than meets the eye;)

The very first thing to look at is the size of the roof from which you will be collecting water and pick the size tank accordingly.
Research for yourself, but I found these facts at a local hardware supplier Builders:

For roof sizes ranging from 50 to 100 metres squared a tank ranging from 750 to 2 200 litres will suffice. Bigger roofs, ranging from 200 to 400 metres squared, will need a bigger tank, ranging from 2 500 to 10 000 litres.

Of course one has to take a couple of factors into consideration when you decide on a position - near a downpipe on a lower side of the house, aesthetics and space of course being very important.
We installed two tanks to start off with, both discreetly placed out of the way.
This one was placed at the back of our little bnb Lily's Cottage

The second tank was placed at the back of the garage.

Hubby first had to build a level solid concrete base for the tank behind the cottage. Being in civil engineering, this was done with precision, although he would still fault it, drives the impatient @lizelle insane!

We looked at some of the leaf catchers required for connecting the down pipes to the tanks.

Here you can see where it is placed. The larger pieces of debris is caught, only allowing water and finer particles into the pipes.

The rainwater then gushes down into a vertical pipe called the first flush diverter, which prevents finer debris from going into the tank. The end cap is fitted with a ball valve to empty this contaminated water from time to time.

One has to fit an overflow pipe as well; ours goes into a storm water drain and has already overflowed after the intense rains we had lately.
Here the overflow has slowed down to a trickle about half an hour after the last downpour.

A friend's pool is near his tanks and he leads his overflow into the pool so he never needs to top up with municipal water.
He further installed four rainwater tanks which he's connected for domestic use; it has a pump, a large filter fitted outside and a reverse osmosis filtration system in the kitchen for drinking water, so they rarely use municipal water.
We are aiming to do the same but first need to install more tanks; just happy that we've started our little water conservation project! Will be useful in the dry periods especially for the pool and the veggie garden which is coming along nicely.

Could not resist showing you the gorgeous sunflowers my Mom received for her 88th birthday from my nephew who lives in far-off Minnesota.

I dried the flowers and kept the seed which we put into special starter soil and did not think anything was happening till these sunflower babies popped their little heads out:) Hopefully we will be able to pick our own sunflowers one of these fine days!

Ever since my nephew left South Africa for the USA, he brings a sad little smile to my Mom's face by sending her a bunch of her favourite Sunflowers on her birthday; this was last year. She misses him terribly!
I will translate her birthday card for you, this was for her 87th birthday:)
So many candles, so little cake.

This has been my contribution to @tattoodjay's and @elizacheng's Wednesday Walk & Make me Smile Collaboration Challenge.

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Original Content by @lizelle

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