Vent: My neighbor's backyard stream project turned into a swamp

I visited a community garden in Portland last month and noticed they built a rain barrel system that collects water from a 200 square foot shed roof. Smart idea, but they placed the barrels on flat concrete blocks with no leveling, and after a heavy storm, one tipped over and dumped 50 gallons onto their tomato bed. The runoff then flooded the path and ruined three bags of mulch they'd just laid. They're blaming the design, but the real issue is they never accounted for overflow or elevation. A simple 4 inch PVC overflow pipe would have fixed it. I ended up spending an extra hour helping them dig a small trench to redirect the water. Why do people skip the basic drainage math and then act shocked when gravity wins?

1 comments

1 Comment

tyler61416d ago

Ugh, that's so frustrating! I mean, it's like people just assume water will behave and then get all shocked when it does the exact opposite. I've seen similar stuff at a few community plots before, and it's always the same thing where they skip the little details like overflow or slope and then it turns into a mess. It's good that you helped them dig that trench, but honestly, they should've just spent the extra hour thinking it through before the rain came. Gravity always wins, no matter how good the idea is on paper. Hope the tomatoes and mulch survive at least.