Carrboro: Pleasant Drive
Right down the street from our Weaver Community project, two neighbors were looking to make a sustainable change to their property, including a cistern, multiple rain gardens and impermeable pavement removal.
Cistern
For the first home, the owner wanted to capture water coming from the roof of their small guest housing in the back yard. Based on the roof size and the height of the downspout, we installed a 305-gallon tank with 3 debris filters, passive drawdown, overflow pipe and an irrigation control box. This treated 274 square feet of roof.
Rain Gardens
On the same property as the cistern, two rain gardens were installed to capture runoff from the home and driveway. The first and larger garden was placed in the back yard across from the cistern. Piping was installed running from a drain box to the garden to capture driveway runoff. A smaller garden was placed on the northeastern side of the home, capturing rooftop runoff. In total, 75% of the roof was treated.
Similarly, the neighbors installed a rain garden in their front yard to mitigate water damage and runoff, treating 100% of the roof area. A section of land was also regraded coming off the south side of the home and included a swale.
Permeable Pavement
Along with a rain garden, the neighboring home had impermeable pavement removed from the driveway. Concrete turf stone was installed in its place. A section of pavement was also removed and converted in grass.
