From rain stream to mainstream

By Valarie Schwartz, Correspondent • Published: Mar 14, 2008 in The Chapel Hill News

Jim Melville is customizing each of his newly built homes at Winmore in Carrboro with irrigation systems, which include cisterns that can hold up to 1,700 gallons of water. Rain water flows through the system from the roof into the cistern and is used for irrigation and other lawn needs.
Staff Photo by Leslie Barbour

Jim Melville has been building houses for 25 years, so he has seen plenty of changes in style, design and colors.

But it has only been in the last decade that he has seen the growing trend toward green.

The latest project for Melville Builders Inc. has been at Winmore, in Carrboro off Homestead Road and west of High School Road, where four builders are building 96 homes.

"Green building became more prominent once we started here," Melville said from the front porch of an almost-completed house he built on speculation. The Winmore homes are being built with such green features as double-glazed low-E glass, low VOC paint and carpets and with builders recycling as many by-product materials as possible.

And each house where the land allows it also will have a cistern buried in the yard. And don't be surprised it you see rain barrels popping up at some homes.

Melville says that all four builders at Winmore are on board with green building and more efficient use of water resources. He said that going green still costs more money, making it hard for green builders to compete with those who don't employ environmentally responsible materials and techniques.

"With the drought, we got the opportunity to go on and start something that's positive," Melville said.

Building homes with irrigation systems is nothing new, but the irrigation systems at the homes at Winmore will not be connected to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, but rather to the cisterns. Lawns are starting to be planted with native grasses and landscaped with native plants that will be watered with rainwater collected off the roofs and routed to the cisterns through gutter systems.

Mike Canova, building inspector for the Town of Carrboro, hasn't seen the cisterns in use yet but is excited by the sound of it.

"It's a good idea to store rain and reuse it," he said.

A few weeks ago, Melville wasn't sure how the cisterns would become filled during the drought. He was thinking about having reclaimed water trucked in – then it rained. After the rain on March 6, the 1,700-gallon tank at 73 Winmore was full. Even he was impressed.

"We're kind of excited and hope everybody will be," Melville said of the system that catches just about every drop that lands on the roof. Even an attractive rain chain in a front corner off the front porch feeds rainwater into the system.

It's simple math, really. When an inch of rain falls, a 1,000-square-foot roof harvests 600 gallons of water – if the water all runs into a gutter system that dumps into a repository. That's the reason why a rain barrel connected to other rain barrels at the end of a downspout collects so much water. The surface area of most roofs around here is larger, like the one Melville built in Winmore, where, at 2,600-square-feet, a 1-inch rain results in 1,560 gallons; so the two inches of rain that fell March 6 was more than ample to fill its tank. Once the tank is full, a switch is triggered to divert the overflow into natural areas.

It's fast becoming a mainstream trend in building, but what about installing cisterns in existing homes?

The cost just about doubles depending upon the home and landscape, according to Melville, who said the cost ranges from $5,000 to $10,000 on new homes.

"We're trying to keep it closer to the $5,000 range," he said. They have found that at existing homes it can be easier to install three or four 500-gallon tanks that are all linked together with the gutter system.

It's something that Mark Ray has also started looking at – all kinds of business ideas have come his way since the drought.

Ray grew up knowing the importance of irrigation because his parents, Jim and Donna Ray, are owners of Occoneechee Golf Course in Hillsborough.

"I grew up in the family business," Ray said.

His parents also drilled conservation into his head from an early age.

"I knew to never leave a light on when I left a room," or to let water run while brushing teeth, he said.

While trying to grow tomatoes during the drought of 2002, Ray, at his grandfather's suggestion, started looking for rain barrels to prevent his well from running dry.

"I couldn't find them anywhere," he said.

Then he struck gold in California – but learned that shipping costs made them cost almost as much as gold.

He kept looking until he located some in North Carolina – then he bought a lot, some of which he set out for sale at the golf course.

"They started going," he said.

With this drought, finding used food barrels and up-fitting them into rain barrels has turned into a full-time business, called Epoch Solutions. His enlistment of Person Industries, a rehabilitation program of the Person County government for workers who have disabilities, has provided a boon there as well, with the number of workers increasing from 10 to 22.

"It's opened up the world for them," Ray said.

Seeing how much is being saved from the landfill by reusing these barrels, Person Industries has also gone into the recycling business just as Orange County did long ago.

Whole Foods caught onto what Ray was doing and started selling his rain barrels (for $99.99) and enlisted him to run 25 rain-barrel seminars in Georgia, also experiencing drought. Ray's barrels were provided at the seminars OWASA ran in recent months, and Southern State can't seem to keep enough of the barrels in stock (also $99.99).

Not only does Ray's phone ring incessantly with people looking for rain barrels, people call him with leads to more. When reached by phone Wednesday morning, he was in a Down East swamp up to his ankles in mud, chiggers and fire ants helping recover 5,000 barrels.

But he was laughing as he said, "I think I'm going to have to start charging more!"

Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com.