One Drop at a Time

by Anthony Robinson

Submitted : Spring 2015

Zephyrhills Correctional Facility uses too much water.

“Isn’t there any way for Zephyrhills Correctional Facility to spend less money and make the facility a bit more self-sufficient, thus having more money for maintenance, staff, and equipment?” A way to transport rainwater for use on the farming area of Zephyrhills Correctional Institution needs to be designed. This project was conducted in the hopes of reducing the amount of water Zephyrhills Correctional Facility uses. “So what’s the Plan?” you might ask. The plan is to use rainwater to irrigate farmland in the institution thus reusing, and recycling, instead of wasting. This project would be to use two submersible water pumps to push rainwater from inside a rain collection unit to a water storage tank and into a series of pipes eventually leading to farmland used to feed inmates in Zephyrhills Correctional Facility. The amount of work for a specific motor that is needed to move an unknown quantity of water from a water tank to the farm will also be found. Currently, there are already attempts to farm in order to feed the population of inmates and cut the cost of shipping food via truck, and buying ingredients from third party vendors. Unfortunately, the cost of water used from city resources outweighs the benefits of growing these crops. There is a better solution, because Zephyrhills receives an average of 52.84 inches of rain annually, and calculus has part of that answer. Using Integration it is possible to calculate Volume of a water storage tank and total Work needed to move all water to the irrigation system. This will find how strong a motor to use in an attempt to make rain collection to irrigate the crops on a facility farm feasible.

Why not use what nature throws at us and throw it back at nature?

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