Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 11, 2013 7:56 pm Hi Everyone Can anyone please help in explain pros and cons of Rainwater garden in which is at Aurora Estate. Is this something which will have a open gutter or something and breeding ground for insects or something? I did have a look at few at Aurora some of them are short ,some are big.Some had plants and I could not see a manhole cover while some had man hole cover which do not look great. Any suggestions ??will it add value to house ?? thanks. Re: Rainwater Garden at Aurora Estate 2May 11, 2013 9:30 pm Rain gardens filter roof water so that the stormwater that ends up in the creeks and the sea carries less organic matter and other pollutants. You should always try to have at least 2 downpipes diverted to each rain garden. If harvesting rainwater, divert the captured first flush to the rain garden. http://raingardens.melbournewater.com.a ... garden.asp 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Rainwater Garden at Aurora Estate 3May 12, 2013 1:43 pm Hi SaveH2O, Thanks for your reply. The rainwater garden which I was talking about is not in the backyard.This is something which the estate is going to maintain and will be a small pocket of the garden repeated every 4-5 houses.This garden pocket is right in front of the entrance door(entrance -footpath-rainwatergarden pocket)While I totally like the garden,the only thing which concerns me is the water clogging and insect manifestation.Since the estate is new,I could not get any information from anyone whether there is any problem which could bring down the land value.From the looks of it ,I forsee water clogging and other troubles arising from it. Any suggestion will greatly help me in making decision to buy the the land or not.Or if anyone has already purchased the land,please advise whether you faced any problems or not.Was the maintenance done by council,estate or the owner ?. The estate details are at http://www.auroraestate.com.au/cs/Satel ... %2FAURPage. The rainwater garden placement are shown in the map below: http://www.auroraestate.com.au/cs/Satel ... tage20.pdf Thanks for your help. Re: Rainwater Garden at Aurora Estate 4May 15, 2013 12:10 am rainwater This is something which the estate is going to maintain and will be a small pocket of the garden repeated every 4-5 houses.This garden pocket is right in front of the entrance door(entrance -footpath-rainwatergarden pocket) I would need to see their design to see how it works. Usually a raingarden is enclosed within a water proof membrane and it has 1 or 2 downpipes draining to the top of a highly permeable soil-sand mix. The water filters through the soil and sand layers and an ag pipe at the bottom drains the clean water to the storm water. The filtered debris that normally washes to the stormwater is either retained on the surface or within the sand layers. I am somewhat puzzled by the fact that there will only be a small rain garden every 4-5 houses rather than one at every house. My queries include... 1. How will the pipe drain to the top of the raingarden for surface filtration given that storm water pipes have to be buried a minimum depth? 2. How big is the supply pipe given that it has to accept the roof drainage from 4-5 houses PLUS the run off from other surface areas; paths - paved areas etc? Let's say that the house roof areas were only 120 sq m each, the combined 600 sq m of roof space PLUS all of the hard surface run off from 5 houses would be draining to one small rain garden. During a Melbourne 1:20 Average Recurrence Interval (ARI), the 600 sq m of roof area alone would account for 1,300 litres per minute PLUS the hard surface areas! This would demand either one very big pipe or several smaller pipes which also leads to the next question... 3. How does the raingarden drain? 4. If the raingarden is enclosed within a waterproof membrane, what is the capacity of water that it can mitigate before overflowing? Is there an overflow provision and what is its capacity? I would be very interested to see this design. Just to explain; Melbourne's 1:20 ARI is calculated as 130 mm/hr and is based on a 5 minute intensity or 10.8 mm of rain in 5 minutes. Regarding your concerns about insects, a raingarden will not pool water unless the sand eventually clogs. If it clogs, you would have trouble. I am in the Casey Shire and there are a number of low 'water' estates in the area that send the stormwater to reed or filtration beds that filter the water before draining into large storage ponds. These add ambience to the estates but it is often done through necessity when developers want to develop low areas but they first have to overcome storm water drainage issues. I don't know the estate that you are interested in but the following issues just in my area is something that you might also need to consider. Our area as well as many other parts of Melbourne had a 1:500 ARI in February, 2011 and hundreds of homes flooded when very full pondages presented hydraulic resistance to the drainage pipes. To this end, there is current debate regarding a recent plan to rezone land currently zoned as an urban floodway within 200 metres of the Berwick Ti-Tree floodway. It is planned to develop the area as a 60 house development. Some lessons are soon forgotten or not understood! The well known and very large Berwick Springs Estate is currently suffering fron Blue Green algae as a result of the low rainfall over the last 8-9 months. The SOI has been in neutral territory during this period and an eventual return to El Nino will see dryer conditions than the last drought simply because our climate is getting warmer. This will encourage more frequent Blue-Green algae outbreaks. I would be inquiring as to whether your estate's location has ever been a designated floodway or flood prone area. I would be asking some serious questions about the raingarden system's hydraulic design and capacity including... 1. How does the pipe(s) drain to the raingarden and if they rise to the surface, will the pipe retain water and if so, how will mosquitoes be prevented access? 2. What is the ARI that the drainage system's hydraulic calculations are based on? 3. All other relevent details as already mentioned plus any you may think of. I am also going to mention here that you should also consider the width of the streets and the feasibility of on street parking. Some of these estates that have narrow roads become an eyesore when cars are parked by necessity on nature strips. Have you checked the width of the streets? They look narrow. The block sizes are very small and I noticed that some are only 300 sq m with 10 m frontages. With real estate, you should always buy a large block if possible. You don't want to be sitting on the toilet while a neighbour is getting into their car or doing the gardening 2 metres away plus the golden rule is: land appreciates, buildings depreciate. Have you looked elsewhere for a larger block? Everyone needs their space. 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. 18 74775 DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair But if it is a ground level open pit, then it is not a charged system. No surprises there. The pipes have obviously been altered and there would be a reason for this.… 3 25139 Once you know the basics, the rest is easy. Read my post in the thread linked below. viewtopic.php?p=1919271#p1919271 2 15500 |