I recently purchased two 300 gallon tanks to supplement my existing two 55 gallon barrels, allowing me to do some more legitimate rainwater harvesting. I've been really intrigued by manifold system designs like this one, but my concern is that it might not work with differently sized containers. Would I need to get the tops or bottoms of the different barrels to the same height to ensure they filled equally? Should I order them in a particular sequence of sizes? Any other considerations I should be making? Many thanks!
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There's no need to "fill them equally" - you can fill one, overflow to the next, which overflows to the next which overflows to the last (or next, when/if you expand more.) This does not seem like a particularly useful "feature" or "goal" in designing a system, and adds a needless constraint that may be difficult to arrange in practice on real terrain. If you are going to hook them all up to one pipe then the lowest top rim will be where it overflows, so the tops would need to be level, which means the bottoms won't, but the bottoms don't need to be...– EcnerwalCommented Apr 6, 2022 at 2:29
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To clarify - for maximum storage (assumed goal) the tops need to be level if a pipe is connected between the bottom of the tanks. That means the taller tanks will fill some while the shorter ones sit empty. Which does not matter, since the water is being stored, and when the level in the taller tanks reaches the bottom of the shorter tanks, the shorter tanks will also start to fill. When emptying, the reverse situation will occur. An overflow pipe (top of one tank to the bottom of the next) can be "stairstepped" down a hill, if that's the terrain you have, but the outflows must be separated.– EcnerwalCommented Apr 6, 2022 at 2:45
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