"In the midst of... severe drought... In Pittsboro an orchid farm has found a way to provide hundreds of gallons of water...
Hank's Chapel Greenhouse has installed a rain harvesting and cistern system to capture rainwater. Last weekend, the inch of rain that fell translated into 1,800 gallons of water collected in its storage tanks. "We use 1,000 gallons a week in the summertime," said co-owner Jeff Baldwin. "In the wintertime, the greenhouses stay cooler, so our use drops to between five and 600 gallons a week." Up until last week, Hank's Chapel Greenhouses depended solely on well water to meet those needs. Then, they installed a rain harvesting system. ... Rain water is channeled off the roofs of the greenhouses... before it is stored, it's filtered by a special system... four gutters coming down through various lines where they connect together and go into a filtration process... This system... features a filtration system that insures water purity as its collected. ... "The plants react a lot better to rain water because it's natural and doesn't have the calcium deposits and all sorts of other hard minerals found in the water from our well system," said Jeff Baldwin. ... Considering the average home has a roof area of 2,000-3,000 square feet,... a system... could harvest enough rain to keep a lawn irrigated at an average home all year long." URL : http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-12-19-0039.html ************** Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
