Rainwater Diverter for a Water Butt 3D Print

Knowing the importance of saving rainwater we recently decided to purchase a rainwater butt for our garage as we didn't have one, this comes complete with a Rain water diverter kit, this kit diverts some of the rainfall into the butt, and when the butt is full the excess water will reflow back down the flexi hose and down the drain pipe as it normally would, on opening the butt, we soon realised that the actual component to deflect the rain water through a flexible hose and into the water butt, was missing, the tank connector was there along with the flexible tube, one of those Grrrrrrrrrr! moments in life.

The company who supplied the kit were notified but it would take at least a couple of weeks to replace the missing component, so far this year in the UK we have had a long dry spell and what with the water authorities calling out for people to be resourceful and not to waste any water, and also with a rain storm imminent it was important that we try to save this precious natural resource, so my first thoughts were to see if I could design a rainwater diverter myself, I had the gutter drain pipe dimensions on the garage and looking at images of various deflectors with dimensions albeit a complicated looking part, I thought it should possible to design and 3D print one.

To the design stage.

Fusion 360

3D Printer

1.75 PLA Or PET-G/ABS for a more robust part.

This description along with the screen shots will tell the story of how a component like the Rain water diverter is created using the power of Fusion 360 up until this point I had never seen a diverter or how it worked until I started on this project but using images and dimensions, I now have a good working knowledge of the principles of how it works and we can create a working model.

How the diverter works, within the main body in the main reservoir there is a riser with 2 stand offs, this riser is smaller than the internal dimension of the upper drain pipe, the water flows mainly down through the inside of the pipe the pipe sits on the 2 stand offs allowing some the water to flow into the reservoir and through the outlet into the butt, when the butt is full the water will backfill into the reservoir and overflow back out into the lower drain pipe as it would normally.

For some reason the main body of the reservoir is 6 sided hexagonal shaped, I thought I would stick with that shape as there must be a reason for it so for starters we can create a new sketch on the bottom plane and from there we can select the Polygon tool and create a 6 sided Circumscribed Polygon of 50mm the actual diameter of the component is 100mm, a fillet of 10mm can be added to each of the angles and then we can off set this outer edge 2mm this will be the wall thickness of the component, before extruding this we need to extrude the bottom of the component to 2mm now we can extrude the walls to 59mm Join to the base and fillet the bottom edge to 4mm.

The next task is create the protrusion to the bottom of the component, this is a square shape with a radius applied on each corner.

The centre square is 61mm and to create the radius we sketch a centre circle of 63mm then use the trim tool to cut away the line we don't need, we can then off set this sketch to 2mm this part will fit into the lower part of the drain pipe.

We now need to create the part for the upper pipe to fit into, this is a smaller diameter.

Selecting the internal lower face of the component we can now create a centre circle to fill initially fill in the void, and then create the smaller 55mm circle off set this to 1.5mm and extrude vertically to 25mm.

Around the circumference of this extrusion we now create 2 stand offs, these are what the upper pipe will sit on.

The reason we need these is because the water travels primarily down the inside of the drainpipe, this extrusion is smaller than the internal diameter of the drainpipe allowing some of the water to be diverted to the reservoir and into the butt via the outlet, theoretically, we shall see?

So to sketch these stand off we only need to create one, we can use the pattern tool to create the 2nd.

On the front view, create a tangent plane of the outer circumference of the inner tube, I sketched a rectangle of 20mm x 2mm this can be extruded to 6mm, I extruded this back and cut into the inner circle and then extrude back out to 6mm and joined the main body, I applied fillets to both sides and the used the circular pattern tool to create another opposite using the feature tab.

The next part of this design is to create the outlet for the water to divert to the water butt, on the image it shows this on and angle of the hexagon, not on a side face, so we will be extruding a centre circle with a 1.5 off set to 3 faces at different angles, this proved to be a head scratch.

I selected an off set plane from the mid plane which was exactly on the apex of the hexagonal point where I needed to sketch onto off set this to the approx 30mm to the outer edge of the body, from this plane we can create a centre circle of 26.4mm which is the internal diameter of the flexi water pipe, I created an off set inwards of 1.5mm this would be the wall thickness of the outlet, the next part would be the head scratch, normally you would extrude to object, but with this component there were 3 sides so that didn't work, extruding through and split the body internally didn't work.

The way I got around this trick extrusion was to sketch a vertical line through the centre circle, creating 2 halves, I used the trim tool to delete one side the extruded to object using one of the hexagonal sides, creating a new body, I then used the mirror tool to create the opposite side using the face of the original, I joined this to the new body, this worked to a certain extent but i still had to extrude locally the outer perimeter of the extrusion in 2 places and joined these into the main body, so it worked, I will take that as a win :)) now I could create the through hole by projecting the inner circle and cut into the main body, I made sure all components were combined to make one body, and fillet the inner and outer of the water outlet where it meets the main body to facilitate smooth surfaces for water flow.

The final task is to to create a ringed 1mm extrusion around the water outlet, this is to stop the flexi hose from pulling out.

The easiest way to do this is to create an off set plane from the end face of the outlet off set to approx 20mm and project the outer edge of the outlet, use the pipe tool create a 1mm ring then join this to the outlet.

We can now go onto creating the lid for the diverter.

To create the lid we create an off set from the top of the main body and off set by 15mm the depth of the lid, create a sketch on this plane and project the outer edge of the body, off set this a further 1.5mm this will be the lid wall thickness, extrude this up to the top of the body, create a new body, end sketch and create a new sketch on the top of this, project the top face of the main body and extrude the lid to 1.5mm uncheck the main body from the browser and join the 2 lid components, then fillet the 6 points of the lid hexagon to 2mm, then fillet the outer edge of the lid to 2mm, this creates a smooth radius to the lid.

We now select the the top face of the lid and sketch a 70mm circle, extrude this through to create the hole for the upper part of the drain pipe.

I this point I noticed on the image that there were some tabs around the main body, there are for the lid to sit on, not sure why they are needed as the lid is a push fit onto the main body, anyway I will add them, it will be good practice.

To create these tabs, I will use the same off set plane I used for the lid, we only need to create one of these tabs, as we use the pattern tool to create the remaining 5.

Starting the sketch I projected the top edge of the body onto the off set, then using the rectangle tool created a 20mm x 4mm rectangle, I only needed the outer of this rectangle and used the trim tool to delete the lines I didn't need, within this rectangle and using the outer edges I created a 3 point arc and sketched this to the top of the outer line, so its 2mm basically, use the trim to delete the lines not needed and extrude this arc down and join to 1.5mm fillet the under side of the arc edges, we can now use the pattern tool to create the remainder, using the inner ring within the body as the axis.

This now completes the Diverter reservoir and Lid.

As an addition to this project I have included a Tank Connector and nut, the kit I bought had these components included, any suitable plastic drum could be used with some suitable flexible hose or hose pipe.

To design the Tank connector I Initially created a centre circle of 40mm and extruded this to 3mm I created another sketch on the face of this to 30mm and extruded this to 25mm this is for the threads, on the top of that face I sketched another centre circle of 26.2mm which is the inner diameter of the flexi hose, I extruded this up to 35mm I wanted the inner through to be around 1.8 mm I sketched from the top face and projected this then off set inwards to 1.8mm extrude this through to create to hole.

Selecting the thread tool, I highlighted the 30mm diameter face and modelled the threads, I off set the faces of these threads to -0.2 and filleted the thread to 0.2mm the nut is created by sketching a centre circle and then use the polygon tool to create a circumscribed polygon of 40mm so its 20mm and extruded this to 6mm, threads were created and off set the faces and filleted, and also filleted the 6 points of the hexagon as well as the top and bottom edges.

This is a pretty straight forward print, the reservoir sits on the build plate and support is added manually to the base of the reservoir, the lid is printed face down, there is some clean up to do to the underside of the print, I used a file to clean up the surface which was fine, The tank connector base down and the nut printed as normal.

I made an error with this design which I had to correct, it was the 2 stand offs within the reservoir, I had these on the sides of the pipe not top and bottom when looking at it from the top, it would have trapped water within the reservoir, I used the split body tool to remove and created another one In the correct position and used the pattern tool to create the 2nd stand off.

Testing the diverter was fun, initially you have to align the diverter water outlet with the outlet on the butt, these need to be level for it to function correctly, you mark the bottom of the component on the drain pipe and then measure up 25mm and cut this section out, clean the cut edges etc.

The Reservoir is installed first, on the lower section and then the lid is pushed onto the upper drain pipe section, this sits within the reservoir on the 2 stand offs, then the lid is fitted, connect the flexi hose to both the butt and the diverter and job done.

To test the diverter I filled a watering can with water and tipped it into the gutter drain pipe, soon enough there was a flow of water into the butt, it works!! always a Eureka moment when something works, there was a drip from the flexi hose on the reservoir outlet, it's where the support was, but this can be sorted and there is quite a length of hose due to the position of the butt, I had some 2mm Galvanised wire with which I made a support to ensure that the hose was level.

Cool Green project with a very useful learning curve.

Thanks for Looking.