On April 25th we had 540 people trek through our garden as part of the 7th annual Bay Friendly Gardening Tour. We spent six straight hours answering questions about our chickens, rain barrels, bat house, beehives, and greywater system, probably in that order. After that came questions about many of the 33 fruit and vegetable crops that we've squeezed into our small back and front yards. 

We got many comments about the enormous size of the strawberries in our patch as well as the prolific raspberry and blueberry bushes, and lots of questions about our asparagus and fava beans ("What is that plant? And what is that one over there?").

Many of the people on the tour are novice gardeners, and it was wonderful to hear their excitement as they noted what can be done in just a small space. We were gratified to hear so many people tell us that they were going to go home to put up a bat house, set up rain barrels, convince a spouse to let them get chickens or bees, plant a fruit tree, or build a raised vegetable bed.

Overall, preparing for the Tour was a huge amount of work, but we are thrilled that the re-landscaping project we began a year and a half ago is finally finished (we think). Now that the weather is beautiful and we've begun to eat meals on our back deck, we can enjoy a yard and garden that is busy producing our summer crops without much effort on our parts.

(The top photo shows our Fuji apple tree in the foreground.  The photo below shows raspberries along the chicken fence, an apricot tree just in front and near the center, fava beans at the bottom and toward the center, and asparagus at the bottom and to the right.)

Our yard and those of three of our close-by neighbors will be featured on this year's Bay-Friendly Garden tour on Sunday, April 25th.  The free, self-guided tour is sponsored by StopWaste.org and includes over 40 gardens in Alameda County, grouped in geographical clusters.  Pre-registration is required.

Our yard is pretty well qualified, with native plants, rain water catchment, gray water, chickens, bees, food production, and landscaping with salvaged materials.  We've been told to expect over 500 people (and perhaps well over that, since registration has been particularly strong so far).  There's also a need for volunteers to help out, so sign up if you're interested.

Here's a fuller description of the tour from StopWaste: "The 7th annual tour continues to celebrate the diversity of Bay-Friendly gardens. Urban farmers grow abundant harvests of fruit and vegetables, and keep chickens and bees.  Native plant enthusiasts embrace the local flora. Salvaged material aficionados blend recycled art into the landscape. Bay-Friendly gardens offer something for everyone—come and discover ideas for creating your perfect haven.... Gardens range from professionally designed postage stamp-sized lots in Berkeley to exuberant one-acre market gardens in Pleasanton."

We're pretty excited, although we have a bit more prep to do over the next few weeks.

I first reported on our rainwater catchment endeavors back in February of 2009. That post had a lot of good details and references for getting started, but we've learned some things along the way and have settled on an improved method for converting and connecting barrels.

Our original approach involved cutting off the tops of the barrels, primarily so we could access the inside more easily.  The advantages were that we could clean the insides more easily and install the hose bib more securely.  The big disadvantages were that the barrels lost some structural stability (particularly when full), were harder to keep mosquito-proof, lost some capacity, and were not easy to link together.

Also, that approach was more work, involved more parts, and was therefore more expensive.  Cutting the tops off and getting a nice clean cut was fairly challenging, even though it got a little easier with practice.  Not having the most secure top meant we needed an overflow valve in the main part of the barrel.  We also spent extra money piecing together washers and makeshift nuts to secure the hose bib from both sides.  And then the nuts ended up rusting.

Back to the Drawing Board

I ended up going back to a very simple approach we had rejected early on: simply drill a hole for the hose bib and screw it in.  We had been concerned that the connection would leak or wear over time.  I've now converted six barrels with this approach, and I've only had one problem.  One has a very slow leak that I'll patch once it's empty.  Otherwise, I'm much happier with the new approach.

Here are the specs:  I drilled a 3/4" hole as close to the bottom of the barrel as possible and screwed in a 1/2" male hose bib.  It's a little hard to start screwing it into the hole and you have to be careful to get it in straight, but once it's in it should be pretty secure.

I also found sink strainers that insert snugly into the barrel openings.  They strain out leaves and other gunk, while keeping bugs out.

So that's it.

It actually takes me more time to wash out the barrels beforehand than to convert them.  That's because while the car wash soap and tire dressing is labeled as being "safe for the environment," I've been pretty particular to make sure none of that drains into groundwater or the bay (since we do live in Alameda).  So with each rain barrel upright, I spray the insides with a hose nozzle through one of the top holes. I empty the barrel into a bucket and the bucket down an inside drain.  Rinse, repeat.  Rinse, repeat.  Actually, the 30-gallon barrels fit in my bathtub so it was very easy to clean with a hand shower spray.

Linking Barrels

I was interested in filling more than one barrel from a single downspout from the beginning, but couldn't figure out a good approach.  One of our downspots with the greatest volume output is located at the back of out driveway where there was unused space that was perfect for lining some barrels up.

The biggest problem was just a method for connecting them.  I read through a number of approaches published online, but none of them were very appealing.  They were either more complicated than seemed necessary, or had other downsides.

The breakthrough I had was finally finding an adapter that would screw into the (unusually-sized) holes in the tops of the 55-gallon barrels.  It is a 2 inch PVC Male Adapter that converts to more standard PVC piping sizes.  From there you can reduce down to the size of PVC piping you want and connect up the pieces. I just snapped them together so I can easily remove the piping to clean it or a barrel later on.

The downspout drains into a funnel, which I nested a sink strainer in.  Each barrel has its own hose bib, so it can be emptied independently.

This approach means that we can fill the barrels above the normal fill line, fitting about 65 gallons into the large barrels.  So we now have about 360 gallons of capacity!

One other note: we mostly have white semi-opaque barrels, but have two blue ones.  We had read that an advantage of opaque barrels are that there is less concern with algae growth.  The disadvantage is that you can't see what the water level is.  We haven't had problems with algae and now have a clear preference for the white barrels.

We've been doing our best to reduce our water usage, and just took another big step: rainwater catchment barrels.  As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week, California is on par this year for its worst drought ever.  In the East Bay, we've had water use restrictions and billing surcharges since August.

The idea of rain barrels is to harvest and store the rainwater that is routed down a building's downspouts and use it at a later time.  Since we are also expanding our food-producing garden extensively, it will be even more helpful to have extra water on hand to keep it irrigated.

The first step was to find a source of 55-gallon food-grade (HDPE) plastic barrels.  That type of barrels is used to distribute all kinds of items, including food ingredients (particularly liquids or foods packed in liquids).  Sometimes the barrels will be sent back and re-used after they are emptied, but they are often just thrown away.  For our purposes, it was also important to get barrels that had not contained toxic substances. They also have to be strong enough to be filled with water, so trash cans generally won't work.

We found some barrels for sale on Craigslist in the $20+ range but since we wanted a number of them, we hoped to do better.  After a lot of calling around (and talking to a lot of confused people), the only free sources we could find were car washes, which receive their soap in them.

The next step was to convert them to rain barrels.  I worked with our neighbor Michael to determine the best approach, and we came up with something pretty simple.  There are a number of great DIY write-ups online (some listed below), so I'm not going to go into too much detail on ours.

Basically, we:

1. Cut off the top of the barrel to give us access to the inside.  The barrels we got have a nice wide lip wider than the rest of the barrel, so flipping the lid over then gives it a nice fit.
2. Cut a hole near the bottom of the barrel and fasten a hose bib (spigot).
3. Cut a hole near the top for overflow.
4. Cut a hole in the lid for the water to enter.  I went to the trouble of buying some plastic drain pieces to make it a little prettier, but that's not necessary.
5. Cover all openings with fiberglass mesh to keep mosquitos out.

The final step was "installing" the barrels.  They need to be positioned by downspouts and then the downspouts need to be adjusted to feed into the barrels.  The barrels should also be raised to make it easier get the water out.  You probably want enough room to get a water can under the spigot.  If using a hose, extra height will give extra pressure.  We're putting ours up on cinder blocks.

We've converted two barrels so far, and the total cost for parts came out to about $20 per barrel.

Example Conversion Instructions (all at instructables.com)

• Single barrel
• Linked barrels (fairly simple)
  
• Linked barrels (rather complex)
• Linked barrels, mounted horizontally in a frame

General Information

• Rain Barrel Guide: Good general overview
• HarvestH₂0: The Rainwater Harvesting Community
• Guidelines for storing water
• American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association

Products

• Aquabarrel
• Noah's Rain Barrels

 

I was an early adopter of Honda's Civic Hybrid, purchasing the initial 2003 model in May of 2002.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I have already put 100,000 miles on it after only 5 1/2 years.  But that was part of the point, as I bought the car soon after taking a new job where I would have to commute about 60 miles round trip each day.

I diligently kept track of the true miles per gallon based on my odometer and the number of gallons I pumped into the car at each fill-up.  The following are the results of this tracking so far and some of my conclusions.

Statistics

At each fill-up I recorded the date, total miles on the odometer, number of gallons of gas, and price per gallon.  The majority of my driving was freeway commuting to work, initially between Alameda and Fremont/Newark and later between Alameda and San Mateo.

The Civic Hybrid features a real-time MPG meter, as well as two trip meters that track number of miles driven and MPG for the current trips.  I generally reset one of the trip meters pretty much whenever I started my car.  In late 2004, I started regularly resetting the other when I filled up on gas and adding the reported MPG to my log. 

I uploaded all this data to the website swivel.com, which generated the nice graphs you see previewed below (they're even nicer if you click through).

As an added bonus, they noticed my nice graphs and one of them is currently their featured graph, front and center on their home page.  Sweet.

Estimated MPG vs. Actual

The above graph shows the actual MPG (the lower line, based on odometer and gallons of gas)  as compared with the reported MPG (the higher line, based on the trip meter estimate).  While they do track together, you can see that the car's real-time estimates are optimistic by generally 3-5 MPG.

Variability in MPG

There can be a big difference in MPG from fill-up to fill-up, and I think that's largely because a Civic Hybrid driver can greatly affect the MPG based on his or her driving technique.  Driving fast and aggressively makes the MPG plummet.  If you drive behind a tractor-trailer truck at 58 MPH, you can do very well.

The trip meter and real-time MPG gauge are great motivators.  Adam, one of my co-workers when I worked in Fremont, bought a Civic Hybrid about the same time I did and we shared a similar commute.  For a while we were competing to get a higher MPG on our daily commute (we were regularly getting MPGs in the mid-60s).

Unfortunately, I did not often maintain the patience to get the best bang for my gasoline buck.

Major trends in MPG

You may notice that my MPG increased over time, presumably as I learned to drive the car more efficiently (and perhaps as I broke it in?).  My initial commute was a particularly flat route from Alameda to Fremont via I-880.

In May 2005, I started commuting to San Mateo which had some negative impact on my MPG.  Potential culprits include climbing the incline on the San Mateo bridge, winds on the bridge, and more back-ups (stop-and-go traffic).

My overall MPG has so far been 42.97, but it is continuing to trend up over time. 

MPG by month

While not dramatic, the winter months of January and December had the lowest average MPG.  That could be a factor of the battery being less efficient when it is colder, or the impact of wind and rain.

Cost savings

I was very curious when I bought my car what the payback period might be at which the cost difference between purchasing a hybrid over a conventional car ($3000 over a standard Civic) would be paid back by gas savings (not that that is the only reason for buying a hybrid, mind you).  Gas prices did go up more than I thought they would over the early lifetime of the car.  This is what I paid per gallon:

Ah, remember the days of $1.50/gallon?

My previous car (a 1989 Civic Hybrid) was getting about 28 MPG when I sold it.  I have so far saved about $2,900 over what I would have spent filling up a car of that efficiency.

Compared to the 31 MPG a new standard Civic would have gotten (if it actually met its claimed MPG), I would have saved $2,100 so far.

Not too bad.  My next step: get my MPG numbers back up now that I've shamed myself by posting the results of my inefficient driving.