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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Sunnyvale resident J. Smokey Stover checks on one of his seven rain-collecting barrels located at the side of his home. Stover says that one inch of rainfall fills up the barrels and has cut his outside water usage in half.
Water Works
Sunnyvale resident gives Mother Nature a hand
By Gretchen Knaup
A long-time Sunnyvale resident has found a way to keep his water bill low in the summer by using the previous winter's rainfall to irrigate his summer garden.
Seven years ago, Smokie Stover, a retired mechanical engineer, devised a system of collecting rainfall through an elaborate collection and distribution system. Now his ingenuity is really paying off.
Stover constructed the system himself and has been using it ever since, saving water even as he irrigates his garden in the hot summer months.
"First I did it because it was a necessity," Stover says, recalling the bad old days of water rationing. "But then you can't help but to continue with it. I just hate to see it rain and waste all that water," Stover says.
Calling on his mechanical engineering skills, Stover created a system that allows rainwater collecting in gutters to pour into pipes that drain into barrels connected to each other.
He has arranged the gutters so that the rainwater accumulated on the roof of the house is poured into pipes that are then connected to barrels, which are connected to each other. This way when the first barrel fills up, the water just starts going into the next empty one. According to Stover, just one inch of rain fills up seven 55-gallon barrels. Because the water is all contained, mosquitoes are not a problem.
"You'd be surprised how much water comes off someone's roof," Stover says.
In addition to the seven barrels that line the side of the house, he has another nine barrels in the backyard that he uses for the garden, and two more 1,300-gallon tanks behind the house.
Stover has pipes lining the fence, which take the water all the way to the tanks. He then uses the water that's closest to the area to be watered. Stover pumps the water out of the barrels and into the hose for watering his plants, trees, shrubbery and his vegetable garden.
"I came up with this idea when I retired," Stover says. "I first had some other ideas how to do it, but then I came up with this plan, and it's worked ever since. It was a lot of work, but now there is no maintenance really."
Stover says the water he collects during the rainy season usually lasts until late summer or early fall.
Throughout the year, Stover and his wife, Mary, vary their watering ritual between the stored rainwater and water from the tap. According to Smokie, it works out to be about a 50 percent split, which happily cuts down their outdoor water bill in half.
The Stovers have lived in the same Sunnyvale home for 40 years, and conservation has always been on their minds.
"We've always been very careful about the water we use inside, too," Mary says.
Their property backs up to Stevens Creek with an approximately 60-foot drop to where the creek water runs. As far back as 25 years ago, Stover was pumping water out of the creek to use it for irrigating purposes.
"I hated seeing all the water empty out into the bay from the creek and nobody was doing anything about it," Stover says.
He continued to do that for a couple years before he had an unfortunate accident and took a spill down that 60-foot drop. Miraculously Stover survived the fall with minor injuries, but decided he wasn't ready to risk his life for conservation and stopped pumping from the creek.
He didn't start up with his current efforts until the drought, when he constructed his own, much safer, irrigation system.
Stover has other conservation ideas as well.
Over the patio is a system that Stover has devised in which he can control the amount of light coming in, using hanging shutters and a lever. He controls the temperature on the patio by using the lever to open and shut the shutters.
Thanks to Mother Nature and a little help from an inventive retired mechanical engineer, summers at the Stover home are cool--and the rainwater keeps flowing.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
