Sizing your rain garden.
Roof to rain garden size.
Determine rain garden size for 100 runoff control 1.
Natural looking and kidney bean shapes are popular.
This gives you the size to build the rain garden in square feet.
For this exercise i ve used square feet as a measurement.
Multiply your size factor by the drainage area to get your total garden size.
In this area of the country the majority around 90 of storms are one inch or less in size.
If necessary you may want to amend the soil in your planting area.
If you are placing your rain garden more than 30 feet from a downspout take the yard space into account when you figure the drainage area.
Residential rain gardens are often sized to hold one inch of runoff in above ground storage from the contributing impervious surface.
Most rain gardens are from 100 to 300 square feet.
Water is absorbed fastest in sandy soils and slowest in clay like soils.
Multiply total drainage area by the soil factor.
Identify only the area of roof that deposits water into the downspout you ve targeted for the rain garden.
Measure the distance from the house and the width of the drainage area and add it to your roof figure and find the soil type for your garden.
For the next steps in the planning process go to earth partnership for schools activities de signing a rain garden and rain garden species selection extensions.
For example 600 square feet of my 1 200 square foot roof.