Logistics of Assembling Certain Parts

3.1.2 Logistics of Assembling Certain Parts

The water butt purchased has outer walls that curve in slightly at the top. This means that the overflow exit might not be able to drain out the exceeding water if the tank would become too full. This would only be a risk if the hose’s path connected to the overflow goes higher than the water butt’s opening. The water butt with the hose was therefore modelled using the CAD software SolidEgde to achieve a further insight regarding this potential issue. Measurements were taken of the water butt and used to produce a model. The highest point of the hose bend was found to be 52mm from the centerline of the connection. The assembled parts are shown below in Figure 8 with the water butt, hose, hose lock with hose end connector, hose lock with male connector, o-ring and overflow-exit modelled. Figure 9 shows the hose would not reach higher up than the top of the water butt and would therefore be draining water in worst-case scenario, where the water butt would be completely full. Note that the red line highlights this critical height. The choice of position of the overflow was to enable maximum water and sand in the water butt for the experiments and is at a flat dented-in circular section, ideal for drilling the overflow hole.