Tiger Hill Permaculture
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    • 2011 >
      • Project Beginning
      • My Trusty Farm Truck
    • 2012 >
      • Water Harvesting Earthworks
    • 2013 >
      • Stakeholders Gathering - Ending Re-offending Workshop
      • Forestry Prep and Earthworks
      • Development of Training Centre Envelope
    • 2014 >
      • Mobile Lucas mill
      • Raised Garden Bed Construction - Rockwalling
      • Seed ball making the Fukuoka way.
      • Tree Fern Garden
      • Making a Rustic Compost Bin System
      • Contructing a Holzmiete inspired Compost Toilet and Urinal
      • Making Bone Sauce
      • Water harvesting from roof catchments
      • Building our first kitchen garden
    • 2015 >
      • Installing Irrigation
      • Converting the Shearing Shed to Bunk House
      • Building the Pizza Oven
      • Bath House Construction
      • Making the Wwoofers Kitchen
      • 1st Inaugural Earthworks Course
      • A Very White Winter
      • Kitchen Garden Expansion V2.2
      • Building a pumpkin trellis + update
      • Installation of Drip Irrigation
      • Potato Towers - An experiment in vertical gardening
      • Preserving seasonal vege
    • 2016 >
      • How to make a bottled window panel
      • Berkley Compost Pile
      • This seasons harvest
      • Water tank and stand
      • Winter garden maintenance
      • Worm farm build
      • Belladigga "Beautiful Dam" and Swale fills and spills
      • A week in the life of a Tiger Hill volunteer
      • Kitchen Garden Fencing Project
      • Kitchen Garden Expansion V2.3
      • Farm Tour - Water Harvesting
      • Rock Wall Build
      • Building a Broad Fork
      • Planter Boxes
      • Tool Shed Fit Out
      • Pumpkin Patch Sheet Mulched
    • 2017 >
      • Kitchen Fit Out
      • Bath House Wall
      • Chalet Stairs
      • Butchers Block Build
      • Holtzmeter V2.2
      • Installing Drip Irrigation
      • Making the Kitchen Door
      • Garden Bed Build
      • Compost Slide
      • Composting
      • Dining Room Door
      • Dining Table
      • Fertilizer/ Compost Zone
      • Rocket Mass Water Heater V2.1
      • Bath House Additions
      • Bunk House Reno
      • Chicken Caravan Build
      • Ramp and Stairs
      • Workshop Benches
      • Nursery Construction
      • Bunk House Heater
      • Kitchen Atrium Build
      • Orchard Implementation
      • Planter Box V.2
      • Milk Crate Planters
      • Kitchen Garden Tour
    • 2018 >
      • Preserving the harvest
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Water harvesting off roof catchments.

The water harvesting from the Holzmiete roof catchment has finally been been completed. All the guttering was installed and connected to the 900ltr tank. The 30 square meter catchment will be adequate to fill the tank in a fairly short period in a good rain event. The tank is a basic source for hand wash and so I don't expect it to drain empty very often.
With this I have extended the overflow pipe to act as a top up source into the main house water tank. The roof of the house and the shed feed into this tank and with the past season it has rarely come close to filling.
With volunteers coming to site regularly now, there is considerably more used than usual. Every little bit counts though and every attempt must be made to capture and store this resource as it is not always guaranteed.
This increase in water consumption has highlighted that people coming onto the farm need to be further trained in their habits toward water use. As most people coming to help are city folk, and it is really evident that they are so used to water being a resource that is on tap 24/7.
The hand wash sink was also plumbed in and drain pipe was fitted and laid into the same trench as the overflow pipe. The drain pipe has been strategically placed to feed under gravity pressure into a small native garden near the main hose tank.
This eight thousand litres water storage system was implemented when we started to build the kitchen garden. As there was not yet a regular water source for the garden I had to implement a system that we could use to gravity feed the garden from. The plan was to initially fill tanks with the fire fighter pump on the back of the truck and then pump out into tanks in the garden area. We positioned 8 x1000ltr IBC's behind the car port to act as a wind break as the car port was destined to become an outdoor kitchen. We levelled up the ground and lay down some 8x3 sleepers as a platform for the tanks. All the tank outlet face the garden for access to garden watering. The tanks were levelled with adequate room for the carport roof to be diverted into the first tank with enough fall for water to run.

The IBC's have a lid on top and I noticed that red lids have the same hole size as the pipe I was intending to use to connect them all together. The hole size was 50mm and a really nice fit prior to sealing with silicon. Plumbing material were sourced and measured with 90deg fittings entering the top of the tank. Camlock fittings were sourced to make the tank outlet connectable to the fire fighter pump hoses for alternative filling or draining. 

The tanks were then covered in roofing iron as protection for the tanks from the sun as the IBC's can get brittle when exposed for long periods.
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