Water!

One of the first things we wanted to do in our restoration work at Virsoleil was establish significant water catchment and storage to sustain our future gardens and orchards in times of drought. The climate has been changing in our region with longer, hotter, and dryer summers. We started digging the hole last July and immediately had to get a bigger digger with a jack hammer attachment to break up some very large rocks. The original design was a hexagon shape with the regeneration/filter zone surrounding the pool. We quickly had to adapt our design to accommodate a rather large rocky ridge. This new design has a 10 meter diameter with 1/3 on the North side designated as the regeneration zone. The RZ has drain pipe embedded under under 12 tons of river gravel with 5 vertical air pipes serviced by an air pump which circulates the water through the gravel. In the Spring we will plant various water plants and start the food and herb garden installation around the pool.