Pipes collect water from the barn's roof gutters and takes it in through holes in the barn wall. There are two pipes like this, one on each side of the barn.
(Morton built the barn)
On a loft (second storey) inside the barn, the two conduits pour out into a gravel filled trough. The gravel filters out all the pine needles and other junk and lets the water through to the outlet pipe at the bottom. A piece of galvanized screening keeps the gravel out of the outlet pipe.
The outlet passes through the floor of the loft into a room below.
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In the room below the loft, pipes dump water either into a large cistern (used for barn water or emergency water supply for the house) or into the end of the long conduit that runs underground down the hill from the barn to fill the pond. The overflow for the cistern dumps water into the conduit to the pond. |
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Note the verical vent pipe in the corner. This is open to the air and prevents the tank from being emptied by the siphoning action that a closed system would cause. We learned this the hard way .... |
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Note also the vertical handle on the top horizontal pipe as it approaches the point where it dumps water into the large pipe going to the pond. This is how we govern whether water will be put into the tank or not. If the connection is open, then rainwater flows directly to the pond, bypassing the tank. If closed, then rainwater goes into the tank until it reaches overflow level and then it overflows (through the lower of the two horizontal pipes) into the pond.