Water Tank Article Part 1

Below is my first article for the IICD Newsletter, and I'm sure Andra will post hers promptly:

Today the world’s resources are being depleted on a mass scale. Our reliance on electric and water companies to provide us with the resources we need to live takes away the need to rely on ourselves and our community, therefore depleting the important need to be self-sustainable. At IICD we are committed to sustainability and a healthy environment around the world and at our school, dorms and gardens in Michigan. With this mantra IICD Michigan has been recycling at home since its foundation and in neighboring states on a mass scale with clothes collection.

In this last year there has been a push to go farther and produce our own energy and to store natural rain water to feed our gardens. This first step is to build a water tank that will feed our garden which will then feed us and also our neighboring communities when we go to the farmers market. So below is part one of the steps we have taken to make this vision a reality.

At IICD we realize education comes from learning and doing, this is obviously very empowering and is the driving force in making change for yourself and the community you live in. So of course we as a community have been building this tank for nearly three weeks not including the tremendous effort it took to build a five foot deep hole in the ground which is also six feet wide. Currently we are nearly half way finished. The steps we have so far taken are as follows:
Building a wooden base whose purpose it is to hold the cement and also to hold the skeleton of rebar (metal poles) which strengthens the concrete walls (but that explanation will come later).
Bending and fitting sixteen rebar poles into L shapes. Then connecting the sixteen rebar’s with multiple rebar rings to strengthen and hold the form. After this was completed it looked like a mini prison cell.
Placing the wooden mold in the pit and fitting the rebar cage in the mold. This is when we started to mix the concrete and pour it into the hole, but just enough to where it didn’t surpass the top of the wooden mold.
The walls were the next step. This consisted of particle board cut into thirty-two pieces all eight feet tall by approximately six inches wide. We had to secure the boards together with U shaped nails and screws across metal strips. This reinforcement will be vital for when we pour the concrete into the wooden walls.
Our next step will be to build another wall but with less of a diameter which will be the inner wall, then the concrete will be poured, then the first tank will be finished!

Nearly everyone in the community has chipped in to build this great structure. The measurements and brains behind the operation has been from Anthony one of our teachers. We still have more to do and surely it will be covered in the next newsletter.

This tank is just one of two to be built until we can fully harness rain water to grow our vegetables. We should have the tank finished in a matter of a week or two and will not be able to start the next one until spring. Of course the winter won’t stop the activists at IICD from struggling to become more sustainable and the next project after the water tank will be to start to build our own SOLAR PANELS!!! Then GE will have to pay us for our energy!!!