Water Problems

I needed a few days of sunshine before I could address a problem I encountered with the water system I had planned and installed.

You see, what I didn't take into account was that the mattresses, by themselves, have a bit of weight. So, there needs to be some water pressure to fill the mattress to its limit. Otherwise, all that happens (has happened) is the weight of the mattress (the top half) is greater than the weight of the water column above it and the mattress doesn't rise, which means the water doesn't flow, which means the water overflows at the entry point (i.e. my roof).

So, at first I thought I would just need to increase the amount of water in the water column. This could easily be accomplished by creating a reservoir at the collection point. Unfortunately, that would mean I'd be collecting water on my roof. I don't want the water to spend any time up there collecting other stuff... including birds. So, that was out of the question (and, it turns out, a moot point).

The other way to increase the weight of the water column would be to increase the size of the piping and tubing I'm using. All I'd have to do is make sure the weight of the water (at 62 pounds per cubic foot) was greater than the weight of the top half of the mattress. Easy peasy, right?

Wrong. Well, almost wrong. The water gets filtered before entering the mattress, which means it slows at that point. I can't have high pressure water entering the filter; it makes it less effective as a filter.

At this point, I thought I'd have to do the other solution of having to suspend the mattress from the roof, with the bottom of the mattress just resting on the floor. A few strips of plastic, super-glued to the top of the mattress, in loops, and I could easily take the weight off the incoming water.

But then I had another idea... moments before implementing the change.

All I'd need to do is install the filter at the top of the assembly, just under the hole in the roof, and attach it to the house. (Previously, I just had it lying loose on top of the mattress.) Then, I can create a reservoir beneath the filter, but above the mattress. As I had been using fairly standard tubing in the system, I found I had to replace almost all of it with a bigger diameter of pipe. I figured if I hit a cubic foot of water above the mattress (but below the filter), then I'd have no issues with water pressure. (The mattress weighs a lot less than 60 pounds, but I like the idea of having more water pressure than needed.)

So, I got 1 foot of 14" Schedule 40 PVC pipe, which, all by itself would give me a water volume of about 0.94 cubic feet (or just under 59 lbs of water). After attaching it to the filter, I bolted it to the house, and then connected it to the mattress with a short length of tubing.

Done.

(Well, almost done. I have 2 of these setups. So it's off to do the other one. I also had to wrap the reservoir in foam to deaden the sound of dripping water when it rains. It's not always full because it's bigger than it needs to be. I kept thinking there was a leak up there so I kept having to check up on it the first time it rained.)