Pallet wood rain catchment structure.

I'm volunteering  with Cincinnati Urban Promise at the Bracken Woods Gardens.

They have water onsite, but rain water is preferred for ecological and economic reasons.
I pitched the director, Abe, on a shelter that used the water storage as part of the structure, and he liked it.
We built this roughly 10' square "Water-Shed" in a single day, mostly from pallet wood that was 6 feet or shorter.
the plan is to expanding the water storage and collecting surface, and use the resulting shelter to accommodate  picnic tables for this summers day camp.

Abe is smart guy ,with great drive and organizational skills.
If you live in or near Cincinnati and want to lend a hand, follow this link.
Ideas on community urban gardening are also welcome.

Will: That second pix bothers me.  Please tell me the near corner post does NOT go into the IBC tote.  It must be an optical illusion.  Here:

Lol, no it doesn't go into the tote!
The 2x4 sits on top of the metal frame.
The 0.5x4 deck board screws to the 2x4 and the frame.
No penetration of the tank itself.


At this slope with this framing I'm a little worried about a snow load .
My original design assumed a seasonally removed tarp as the roofing material.
The metal roofing changed this plan.
I still need to go back to install the  gutters and down spouts.
Reinforcing the structure can happen over the summer.

I think it will collapse with a snow load, why not reinforce it now?
Have you compared those poles used to others on buildings?
I would set it out differently.
Set out the IBCs say 4 off with space between them for storage.
Then create laminated beams which will go across the metal frames, and create the slope to one end.
To those beams add the battens for the roofing and then the gutters.
Because the roof is sitting directly on the tank frames, snow loads will not be an issue.
Water will be collected and hopefully you have the storage.
Vertical posts need to be much strongewr as they get longer for any given load, by eliminating the posts you may still get all you need without the posts breaking.

I didn't follow all of that.
The ideal design was 4 columns, each 2 tanks high.
Beams between the columns and roof trusses across the beams.

We didn't have all the materials we needed for that, so we used what we had.
Keeping the storage space a minimum of head high was key.
I'm not worried about compressive strength, as much as lateral forces, so I will be adding diagonal bracing.

Sorry William, basically build the roof at the level of the metal frames with enough tilt to drain.

Yeah, that's what I figured.
We are being greedy for stacking functions,asking the structure to catch water and shelter humans, instead of just catching water and storing inanimate objects.
I've had storage with 4 foot tall walls, and I hated it.
I have built a similar structure, with no angle bracing, and it does fine under snow load.
Mind you that's at my house, where I can monitor and repair any structural issues.



I might move the supports that are screwed to the tank, to line the roofs edge with the openings in the tanks.
That will cut down on the complexity of the plumbing.