Let it Rain! Drainage design working as planned.

Today was the first real rain we've had since the final grading and installation of the drainage system.  The initial rain was soft and by about 10:00 we had collected over 50 gallons of water in one of the 275 gallon IBCs and all the 60 gallon pickle barrels were full.  The barrel by the front door was performing the fountain duties quite well - water from the overflow was spilling directly into the catch basin and going around via the drainage.  The west side barrel on the front was overflowing into the PVC pipe and filling that IBC in the back (only one is currently connected to the system).  The rear barrel was overflowing but due to settling of the dirt and lack of an installed overflow tube it was simply overflowing onto the ground.  Clearly the IBC would have been filled if this one were to be connected into the system.  That's a project for later this week.

Here's the barrel by the front door - rain chain is working well and the overflow is hitting the catch-basin.  That water collected in front is from when the overflow was removed as a test - after this the puddle went away and all the water ran into the drainage system, around the front of the garage and down to the back outlet which leads into the stream.

A view of the top of the barrel - the chain is currently resting on the window screen 'filter' that keeps the debris from entering the rain barrel.  On the other front barrel I used the grate that was included with the pickle barrel as a large-debris filter.  it's effective but the water splashes out more so we'll refine it a bit.  The screen in this case is under the threaded seal at the top of the barrel which is a very good solution.  The water is actually about 2" below the screen - what you see here is the screen and splashing water due to the downpour.  The are right - water really does race off metal roofs!

Here's the water overflowing from the front barrel to the catch basin.  That puddle in front is due to the settling of the dirt and a test where the extension was removed from the overflow.  

Here's a view of the lot during a particularly heavy downpour.  That puddle in front of the surface pipe is because the dirt settled  causing the end of the pipe to flex upward about 5" above ground level.  We'll tackle fixing that when it dries out a bit.  Clearly this drainage system is sufficient - once the grass seed sprouts and takes hold we shouldn't see the localized puddling (like all those footprints across the newly seeded area).

This shows (albeit a bit hard to see) the flow down the East side of the driveway and around the house.

You can see the drainage working as planned - water flowing down the valley to the left of this picture, over the hill and into the natural ravine.