Capstones Complete

By Freddy Carruth, Phase I Fellow

Early in October, we presented our Capstone projects to the Highland County community. It was great to see so many of AMI’s friends, supporters, and fans all together in the same place. The event started with a potluck dinner in the main room of The Highland Center. Afterwards, we presented our Capstone projects.

For my Capstone, I worked with Phase I Fellow Nick on the development and construction of rainwater catchment systems at AMI. Our project consisted of three different catchment and irrigation setups in the AMI village, but I am most proud of the bathhouse and sol patch set ups we put together. Both used gravity to transfer water to the gardens, but the bathhouse water container stored a lot more water. The sol patch set up only had a five-gallon bucket for water and there are already a few improvements that we would want to make. Our third catchment system, the Lodge system, was mostly in place when we began our project, but we wanted to test it out and extend its reach to make it easier to use.

Of course, in order to collect rainwater we had to make sure that the gutters and roofs were clear.

We had to angle the downspout and add some pvc to move the water into the tank.

We had to add some rocks and cinderblock to level the tank off. We had about 38 feet of elevation change between the tank and the garden we were irrigating.

Bucket irrigation used in the sol patch.

We used a few different pieces from a hardware store to attach the tube that would irrigate the sol patch.

After so much research and test running for our designs, it was great talking to both friends and strangers about our Capstone project at the presentation. The shared interest made it easier to talk both about what we were doing and what other ideas people had for water catchment.

I look forward to coming back to AMI to see how the different Capstone projects have been developed and modified.