So just a question about diy rdwc, which I’ve done several times before.
I was thinking of a design for a “container”, instead of ez-stor pails, 5gal buckets, or HD totes from home stores. I was pondering about a trough shape or style.
Eg: for an 8’x4’ area, a trough might be built with dimensions L=84" x W=14" x H=14". Assume the water level is going to be 10" high. So the water volume would be 51 gallons, call it 50. The weight of the water in the trough would be about 420Lbs.
Does anyone think this is “too much” weight for a trough constructed from [whatever building lumber] to hold? And what lumber would you use; 2x10 boards, 2x4 in corners with 1x10 boards or 1" thick plywood cut for the bottom and sides? Build a box “frame” with whatever lumber, line it with rigid insulation? Haha. @carpenters, engineers and builders, diyers, etc.
Those 27 Gal yellow lid totes from hardware stores hold 20 Gal before they start to look over their limits, for sure. That’s around 166 Lbs.
Yep we use those at the farm for mixing nutes in they’re great and indestructible. My other suggestion would be a HDPE water tank, like they plonk on the back of a flatbed to water fields with, whether the caged kind (not too hard to find used from food transportation or maple sapping) or just a big round water tank.
What are you looking to gain by doing it in one big container?
If I was doing this I’d look feed troughs or something designed to hold that much liquid. I’d never sleep at night with 50 gallons of water in a diy reservoir.
This is what @Slammedsonoma420 was talking about, they’re awesome. Gonna get some eventually to paint and turn into giant sub-irrigated planters in my yard someday, cheapest way to do that and they will never ever leak, double walled with structural foam in between, which also makes them the ultimate keg cooler, but it would make your RDWC heat/cool much more efficient:
Honestly though when it comes to ease of acquisition and working with them, you’d probably be best off with the 55 gallon HDX bins, that’s big but not so big that you can’t catch it if it leaks, which those never have for me without long UV exposure or a brutal point hit on a corner:
If you were worried about their strength with all that water in it and the sides bowing out, I would just wrap them in Gorilla tape as reinforcement, the tensile strength on that stuff is bonkers. Or you could just line them with some thinner pond liner rubber as a double layer if you’re not directly on the basement or garage slab.
Another good option would be checking used bar and restaurant suppliers for old stainless wares, a beer box like they use at bars would be perfect if you could find one cheap, or old rectangular deep dish sinks, which you can find for cheap or free all the time on Craigslist Facebook marketplace etc:
Failing that, look for old plans to build plywood darkroom sinks, we had table sized homemade sinks in every darkroom I ever worked in, they were all made of 3/4” finish plywood that had been poured inside with the thick glassy bar epoxy to seal it. We didn’t fill them up, they were just drain tables but that design should work fine with a frame around it.
When I was a messenger, we would have waterproof truck tarp and Cordura bags made by the sling and backpack makers, like the old stinky rubberized military clothing bags but sized to fit a 1/2 keg plus ice. Or a half dozen thirty racks and some ice. We called them wizard sacks, everyone threw in a different 30 rack and you never knew what you were going to pull
