Wind and Rain

Some of the other things that I have been up to is nurturing the green hippy in me. To be fair, I suppose that I am helping to nurture the green hippy in Bill since it was his idea and his house. The picture below shows the rain catchment system that I put in. The winery is too far out of town to be connecting to the city water and sewer so they have a cistern. This means they pay to have all of their water trucked in and costs some serious cash. Way more than the measly 20 dollar payments jasmine and I made in california.

So here is how this works. The most polluted water that comes off of your roof is in the first few gallons. Once the first shot of water has washed off all of the sand, bacteria, and organic matter the water is reasonably clean. The gutters for the entire house are designed to funnel all of the roof water to the down spout shown in the picture. From there the water drops through a 1/8 in. screen and then through a mosquito screen. After that it drops into the first of the two large 4 in. horizontal pipes which has a float valve in it (plastic balls that are buoyant and are pushed to the top of the pipe where the seat into a fitting and seal the flow of water off). Next the second diverter fills up and then the rest of the water overflows into the tank. There is a small hole in the bottom of the horizontal tubes to allow the water to drain over time. But fear not, nothing is left to waste. The water that drains from the diverters as well as any overflow from the cistern is channeled into the creek and koi pond setting that is in the back yard. That is what the plastic tubing and 3" piping that can be seen in the bottom of the picture is for. Once I got done plumbing up the rain collector assembly the wind picked up and I turned around to notice this...

The windmill was installed this past summer and was whipping around. It produced about 10 kW that day which is respectable but not enough to run the house, winery, and sweets. Pretty cool stuff huh? Bill and Dorothy are getting the home and business pretty dialed in. Regrettably the wind mill does not receive enough wind to make a large difference in their power bill but they sure are doing a great job of leading by example. Maybe this summer they will go solar?

Now even when it is windy or rainy we have a good reason to be happy around here. Isn't that a great thing.