times 150, 60, blah, blah, blah.

We get our areas that way for these different land uses that
don't necessarily have to be, you know, total areas. They could be spread up in little chunks all
over the watershed, but they add up to 40, 30, and 30%. Okay, so 60 acres, 0.5 coefficient.
Let's start writing some of this out. Don't start messing up. Okay, 45 acres. And then, of course,
the sum of your areas is only going to be your total watershed area. So from that, our sea
average,
is 0.485, which is just the weighted average. And so that's really all, oh well, we need the
intensity, right? So that's just gonna come off of this. We said 30 minutes. You know, I picked
five. Maybe that was, you got maybe a little bit different number there. I went ahead and went
with five. So, We have our dimensionless coefficient times five inch per hour times 15, ah, what
am I saying, 150 acres. And then converting that, because that's in inches, we want to get to
feet. Okay. Oh. Whoops. I kinda messed up there, didn't I? Because that's not what I wanted.
Wow, sorry about that. I don't know why I did that. So this is what I meant to do. I meant to put
this over here.
So peak flow rate is gonna be our average C value times five inch per hour times 150 AC. and
then convert it to feet. Which will give us 30.3 acre feet per hour. So that's um maybe a little bit
of a weird unit if you're not used to that what that means you know, kind of conceptually here, is
if we had something like that. Say if this is 30 acres of an area here, and this is one foot tall,
then this whole volume would be 30 acre feet. So that's just another way of handling or writing,
expressing very large volumes instead of doing, you know, millions of cubic feet an hour or
something like that. Okay, that's all we have for today. How do we do on time?
Well, kind of failed, about 15 minutes, sorry about that. But hopefully this was useful and I hope
it was, you know, maybe people like this format a little better, so let me know if you do. Either
way, thank you so much for watching if you stuck through for this long. And definitely thank you
so much to everyone who has left a comment or liked our videos or subscribed to the channel.
We really do appreciate it. Thank you and we'll see you next time.

Basics of the Rational Method | Learn Hydrology - transcript

Hello, welcome to Clear Creek Solutions instructional videos. Today we're going over the basics
of the rational method. This is a part of our stormwater education series. So maybe you're a
student in college, you're just learning about water resources, or maybe you're studying for the
FE exam and you're trying to learn about the rational method. this is a great video for you. First,
a little bit about Clear Creek Solutions. We are a hydrology company that does stormwater
analysis and facility modeling, as well as some software development for software packages
such as WWHM 2012 and Wim Swim. We've done software development for clients around the
globe, as well as hydrology education and clinics such as this video as you see here. So go to
www.clearcreeksolutions.com to learn more.
Okay, first let's give a simple definition for the rational method. It is a simple method for
calculating flow and runoff for a given stormwater event. So let's say you have a parcel of land,
rainfall occurs on that land. The rational method is there to calculate how much of that water is
going to runoff. So we know how much water is coming off the site, how much do we need to
treat or put in a detention facility. This equation is going to sort of give us a rough estimate of
what that amount would be. Now, let's get into a little bit of background. This method was
developed to easily calculate that runoff from the site. There's only a few variables involved.
There's actually only four, Q equals CIA.
USCIS English units are required for this equation to work properly, and it's still used currently
by many municipalities around the country, although there are better methods, continuous
simulation model to be exact, but it's still used by many, and it can give a good rough estimate
for projects. Let's talk a little bit about single event hydrology, because that is what the Marshall
method is. It is a single event method. Basically, it means that this method occurs in a vacuum.
So when rainfall falls on a certain parcel, we're not taking into account previous rainfall events
or anything like that, the soil saturation rate. We're just taking into account this event. So that
would be single event hydrology. And it's a primary method that's currently being taught right
now, although continuous simulation is starting to gain more ground.
This method revolves around the simple equation such as Q equals CIA. So we got flow or the
discharge runoff off the site area, which is usually an acreage, a runoff coefficient, which is
dimensionless based off the soil at the parcel and the intensity of the rainfall, which is inches per
hour. There are plenty of free and paid software packages that use this method. And like I said,
it's easy to program and use. There's only a few variables here. So there's a few assumptions
that I said before. The rainfall event always returns the same flood period. So every rainfall
event of the same intensity on that site is always going to return the same flood. Now this is not
exactly what happens in the real world because previous events are always going to modify how
much runoff there is based off the soil saturation and other conditions.
But for the rational method, we just keep it simple to get an estimate. Like I said, the soil
moisture conditions are assumed. and we can't account for the long-term infiltration, or as I said
before, the back-to-back storms. And the latest research in hydrology shows that continuous
simulation is much more accurate to calculate this discharge. But for the rational method, this is
just what we're going to use, and it's taught, and it's very simple. So let's go into some basic
formulas. And this is stripped straight from the FE manual for the civil engineering FE exam.
We've got the one on the right, the rational method Q equals CIA, and then we've got an SCS
rainfall runoff equation. We're going to do a sample problem with both so you can see how
these equations work.
So for our first sample problem, a 20-acre parcel of land has a rainfall intensity of 1.5 inches per
hour and a rational method runoff coefficient C of 0.1. The flow rate or discharge from the site is
most nearly. So how are we going to do this equation? Well, we're going to use Q equals CIA.
The peak discharge equals the runoff coefficient, times the rainfall intensity times the watershed
area. So this is pretty simple here. Q equals C, 0.1 times I, 1.5 inches per hour times A, 20
acres equals three CFS. And I just wanted to prove to you that the units do work out for this
equation because on the surface, feet cubed per second, you wouldn't think that acreage in
inches per hour would work out, but I just wanted to show you guys that C has no units, I is in
inches per hour, and if you convert inches per hour to feet per second,
And then acreage is just an area, and that can compute out to feet squared. So now you've got
feet per second times feet squared equals feet cubed per second, which equals the peak
discharge feet cubed per second. So the units do work out in this equation. So the answer
would be A. Now let's move on to the next problem. Find the runoff Q for a parcel that has a
curve number CN of 88 and a precipitation P of 3 inches. So we're going to use that SCS rainfall
runoff equation. This is going to be a little more complicated. We might have to have multiple
steps here, but the same basics apply. So we've got precipitation inches, the maximum base
and retention S, Q runoff in inches, and the CN curve number.
So here's the solution. First we're going to use that equation 88 equals 1000 over S plus 10. So
that was one of the equations back. If we go back a few slides here. s equals 1000 over cn
minus 10, or I'm actually, I think I'm using cn equals 1000 over s plus 10. And then I'm just
multiplying this factor to the other side, and then you can find S, which is 1.364. Then we're
going to plug that into this equation, the top one, Q equals p minus 0.2 s squared over p plus
0.8 s with all of our given variables, and you get q equals 1.82. So the answer is B. So those are
some basic problems using the rational method and the SCS runoff equation.
So those are the basics of the rational method. If you have any questions, leave a comment
down below. But this is just a simple method for calculating runoff in hydrology. Really, it is
much more complicated. So how do we learn how to use these more complicated methods?
Well, we've developed a software package called Wim Swim, which is a continuous simulation
hydrology model. If you want to learn more about continuous simulation, check out our video,
Continuous vs. Single Event Hydrology. But the best way to do hydrology and calculate these
methods is to use a continuous simulation hydrology software such as Wim Swim. And if you're
using a package such as WWHM 2012, we have a free gift for you. You can get a free template
pack that allows you to calculate and start designing your stormwater facilities today.
So go to the description box, give us your email, and we'll send you that template pack so you
can get started right away. So thank you for watching this video, and we'll see you guys next
time.