It's HOW big?

On Tuesday, we added one of the most innovative green features to our building when an operator of a huge crane assembled and placed the cistern in what will be the basement of the building.

In an effort to limit the amount of water that we use unnecessarily, we're installing a stormwater capture system.  In short, all of the water that lands on the roof will be collected and piped to our basement.  It will be used to flush the toilets and, if necessary, irrigate the landscaping.   The only water we'll be drawing from the City of Reading system will be from our taps. 

In total, this will be an 85% reduction in water usage.  Obviously, that number would be different in a residential setting, but the ongoing cost savings are huge.  

To hold that much water, the folks from Modern Precast Concrete made us a special cistern.  Installed in two parts, the assembled cistern is seventeen feet long, seven feet wide and nine and a half feet deep.   It will hold an astounding five thousand gallons of water, enough to guarantee that we will always have an adequate supply.

In total, the cistern weighs almost twenty six tons, or about as much as ten African elephants!

Each year, about forty eight inches of rain will fall on the site that we occupy.   We had two choices about what to do with that rain.  We could do what most buildings do:   Develop an expensive system to flush it into the Schuylkill River and then go buy new water.  Alternatively, we could capture the free water and use it.     We thought it made sense to use the free water!