"An unprecedented drought stretching across the southeastern United States has forced some of the region's largest cities to declare water emergencies."- ABC News
(for full story: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3730145&page=1)
So we got a call from Home Depot head office in Atlanta. They asked if we could create a TerraCycle rain barrel using an old wine barrel and ship it ASAP. The inspiration came from the TerraCycle Rotary Composter, which we had developed only months ago. We were very excited to solve the problem and after doing some research found that most people had been using old olive drums, or other large plastic (not that great looking) barrels to collect their rain water. And more over rain barrels were not available in major retailers. And on top of all that most rain barrels were selling for $199 or more.
This was our ah ha moment and within a day we designed a rain barrel from old 55 gallon wine barrels that could retail at $129 - $99. The design was simple. Put a spigot at the bottom and a hole in the top for your downspout. The water from your downspout would fill up the rain barrel and when you needed to use the water you'd turn on the spigot and viola.
Someone at TerraCycle then asked the question: "What if you were a big rain barrel person and wanted to upgrade to multiple rain barrels?" So to solve that we added another spigot near the top that could act as an overflow valve and allow you to connect multiple ran barrels together.
After lots of work we shipped the first truck load of rain barrels to The Home Depot stores in Atlanta. They sold incredibly fast. Now we need thousands of wine barrels! So if you want to help go to your local wine store and buy that case of wine you've always wanted. Just make sure the vineyard is in California.
Above is our new California TerraCycle wine barrel operation. There's over 3,000 barrels - just don't ask for the bottom one. Did you ever think that wine barrels could be a waste stream. It turns out that wine barrels start in Africa where oak is harvested. The oak is then shipped to France where it is hand built and then shipped to California where it is used once to make red wine. ONCE! Then it is garbage and thrown away for next to nothing. Garbage is a crazy thing.
2 comments:
Your rain barrels need a bigger overflow hole. My client loves the look of the wine barrel, but is concerned (rightly so), that in big storms, the rain barrel will overflow faster than the capacity of the small hose sized overflow.
Wine barrels typically have a hole at their midpoint. Do you plug that and then drill a new hole near the bottom? More importantly, do they seep water if left dry for a while?
Post a Comment