We are proud and excited to announce that we are in the final process of installing two 1,700-gallon rainwater storage systems here at our nursery. With this system in place, we will capture the rain water off our roof and direct it into the two underground storage tanks. From there the water will be pumped into our drip irrigation system to water a large portion of our nursery stock. We plan on capturing rain from roughly 6,000 square feet of roof space, and a 1-inch rainfall will fill the entire 3,400-gallon system! To calculate this you take the square footage of roof area (X) .6 = gallons per 1 inch of rain. Based on results from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculations of average annual rainfall for Illinois (1971-2000) we will harvest 141,552 gallons of rainwater per year! Try this calculation on your own roof and discover how much rainwater you can harvest.
The rainwater storage system will significantly reduce the amount of potable tap water we use to keep our plants healthy and happy here at Nature’s Perspective. It will also reduce our ecological footprint by capturing fresh water that nature intended for plants and using it for that purpose rather than letting it run off down the drain. The initial phase of the excavation and installation of the two tanks are complete. As we near the completion of this project we are finalizing plumbing the downspouts into the appropriate locations and plumbing the drip irrigation system. This weekend’s rain will be the first test of the new system. We are grateful to Lake Street Supply of Chicago for their generous help and collaboration on this project, as well as supplying us with the Graf System. Stay tuned for future blogs about our system.
