Redirected
Down
Spout
In our front yard we have a down spout that does not work because
the ground is sloped so badly that when it rains the water doesn’t go up the concrete
slab. It fills up at the back and spills over the into our driveway which results
in a mini pond of ice or water in our drive way. This can be very dangerous in the winter when
its ice and it’s no fun to get out of a vehicles into a pool of water, when you
don’t feel like jumping in puddles.
I have also thought about what a waste of water this little pool
is just sitting in our driveway. I have thought about that many times when
watering our plants. I wish I could have
all that water that spills out a few feet away from our house, if it could only
be somehow poured into our garden. I
think plants thrive far better on rain water than on water from the hose.
So I looked around on-line to see if anyone else had a solution
for redirecting water. I found some
really neat ideas on using rain water but nothing that fit our situation. I did find inspiration from some people’s ideas
of making what looks like a little creek bed at the bottom of a down spout.
If I could somehow make
something that not only compensated for the slope in our yard/driveway but could
also send the water the other way, that should prevent some dangers for our
driveway and better use the water.
The project slowly evolved as we added more and more elements to
make the redirection of the water more effective.
Attempt#1
We piled up a lot of dirt where the concrete slab was in an
attempt to see if we could make the water run the other way when it rained.
When it rained the water did pool in the pile of dirt but then the
water broke through the dirt.
Attempt#2
We decided we needed something to help hold the dirt in. So we
added some wood around it.When it rained next the wood held the dirt together better but
when it rained a lot the water spilled through.
Attempt#3
We took bricks we had gathered and built a damn like thing to
hold the dirt. This worked even better but when the dirt got saturated enough
the water slowly seeped out but it was another step in the direction we were
trying to go.
Attempt#4
We cemented together the bricks. This had even less leakage. It
was just along the bottom. I was again encouraged because each attempt resulted
in less water in the driveway and I was closer to redirecting the water to our
trees in the front. I figured I might as
well send the water to something useful.
Attempt #5
At this point I had watched some videos from the pond digger and
wow do they do cool stuff. No I didn’t want a pond in my yard. However, I did
learn that if I added some plastic that I would probably fix the last little
bit of water leakage. So I added some
plastic we had left over from our green house. Then there was the problem of
having enough rocks. So I used the
cement that was stuck around posts I had taken out of the ground when I removed
our front fence. I took a sledge hammer and hit the cement till it was in
smaller chunks and added my smaller rocks around it on top of the plastic. Nowhere
near as pretty as the pond digger but it worked.
Attempt#6
This was almost what we wanted. However our down spout was not
attached and the water from the gutters freely blew which ever direction the
wind blew. So our latest design only worked when the water was not being blown
outside of the hill we had built. So we
reattached the down spout but shortened it a little and it works very well
now. Winter is not quite here so I have
not seen the advantage in no ice yet but I have seen our trees receiving the extra
water that was redirected towards them.
I like this so much I am trying figure out a way to tweak this
design to redirect our down spouts in the back yard to our fruit trees in the back
yard. More water should hopefully mean bigger fruit.
Materials Cost
Dirt- already had 0.00
Bricks-already had 0.00
Cement for bricks
-given by family who had left over 0.00
Plastic sheeting-already had 0.00
Cement chunks-from posts 0.00
Total Cost
0.00
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