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by
Allan Britnell
photos by Dave Starrett |
DIVERTING WATER |
| Diverting
water benefits you and your neighbourhood |
Municipalities across the country are trying to correct a mistake
made decades ago when sewage pipes and storm drains were laid
out below ground. The problem is that the two sets of pipes
run to the same place: the sewage treatment plant. During heavy
rains, the treatment plants at the end of the line are overwhelmed
by the volume of liquid (rain or otherwise) and the excess,
including raw sewage, flows untreated into nearby lakes and
rivers.
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| BEFORE
(above) AND AFTER: rain barrels (below)
capture water for your garden. |
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Here’s
where you come in. Your eavestrough funnels the water running
off the roof to one or more downspouts. In many urban homes
these downspouts are connected to the storm sewers via a standpipe.
Disconnecting your downspout(s) and diverting the water to the
lawn helps reduce the chances of sewage overflows.
The volume of water from a single
house will accumulate—almost 72,000 litres (16,000 gallons)
of storm water over the course of a year. It’s easy to
see why the beaches along Lake Ontario are often closed to swimmers.
There are a few different disconnection
programs out there. Toronto city workers, for example, will
do the disconnection for you, free of charge. And the City of
Vancouver offers rain barrels (more on these in a moment) to
residents at the subsidized price of $60.
But even if your city doesn’t
have an official program, you can do it yourself. The disconnection
is a relatively cheap and easy Saturday morning job. And the
benefits to you and your neighbours are multifold.
Aside from improving your own
water supply, disconnecting downspouts also benefits homeowners
directly. If, for example, the standpipe it feeds into is cracked,
you could have water running out against the foundation—and
potentially even into the basement—every time it rains.
And if you choose to divert the
water into a rain barrel (see photo above), you also have the
added benefit of a constantly replenished supply of warm, oxygenated,
non-chlorinated water to use on your garden and houseplants.
Not to mention saving some money on your water bill.
If you’d rather not go to
the expense or don’t have the space for a rain barrel,
there are several other affordable op- tions (at about $10 to
$15 each) for dispersing the water: from a length of downspout
ending at a splash pad and flip-up elbows to self-retracting
plastic sleeves and flexible polyethylene tubes.
Just don’t forget to plug
the standpipe with concrete or a rubber cap before you call
it a (rainy) day.
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