This is an article about rain harvesting and why I feel it’s so very important to do. I guess there are several types of rain harvesting, I will be discussing the rain water that comes off of rooftops, also known as roofwater harvesting. I feel this is the perfect time to talk about today as I collected 150 gallons of water in just about an hour of yesterdays 9 hour rain. Its a wonderful tool!
Why?
Areas of water shortage
First I feel I need to explain why I do it. This is the main reason why I even considered rain harvesting. We run off of a well as our source of water, but its not the greatest well. Usually during the summer we run so low that we can’t even do our laundry let alone water my garden.
This was a serious issue as I love gardening and couldn’t bring myself to NOT have a garden because we didn’t have water to water it. So what did I do? I started conserving water in totes around my rooftop. I started to see how much rain I was able to collect with just a 15 min rain. So I did some research and found that my idea of collecting roof water was nothing new.
Collecting roof water is perfect for areas that have water shortages. The amount of rain you can collect is amazing and if you have the right system you would always have rain water collected.
Now I live outside of town, as for in town there are water restrictions. People would benefit collecting water for these reasons too. Depending on the time of year the towns restrictions include not being able to wash your car, or grow grass, or water on certain days or certain times. It literally is you can wash on odd days if you house number is odd but only before 8:00am. I don’t know about you but my garden doesn’t abide by those rules very well, when it’s thirsty, it lets you know.
To ensure a backup for other water supplies
Especially if you have a large garden or farm area, you know that the demands of water is extreme. This puts quite a load on the watering system you may be on. I have a friend that has a farm the size of a football field and they take all the water from the well. Now I know this well produces VERY well and they are lucky they have it so good. But what happens if the pump breaks? Or what happens if this is the year the well slows down? What about a leak? All these reasons are great reasons to have a back up supply of water conserved.
Last year another part of our town all of a sudden lost their water supply. They were out of water for two weeks. It was a huge ordeal for the water company to ship water to them and even then, it wasn’t near enough water to please people. This was a trying time for them, however if they had a back up tank they could had burdened the lack of water supply easily.
It’s Green
With all the talk about giving back to the world, how much greener can you get? You are being self sufficient, storing the water that comes from the skies, temporarily just to put it back in the ground as you use it. Its a beautiful circle that I feel proud I’m a part of.
Benefits
Mother Natures Fertilizer
ANYONE that has a garden can tell you that rain water is the best way to water your garden. I don’t care how much you water with well or city water the rain water is the instant fertilizer a garden needs. Don’t believe me? Go out to the desert or the mountains after a weeks worth of rain and see how much has truly blossomed and grew. A month or so ago we had a weeks worth of rain and my garden pretty much doubled in size, they grew more in that week then they had in the month before. It was beautiful to see mother nature at work.
Saves Money
Now it depends on where you live of course but a bill from a water company can be outrageous if you are watering a football field of plants. You are at the mercy of deciding if you want to continue to pay to have your garden? Is it worth the costs when you factor the water bills in?
Cleaner water not treated with chemicals
Going back to mother natures fertilizer you get cleaner fresher water. You don’t have the chemicals or chlorine that can potentially be absorbed by your plants and in turn eaten by you. This is water at its purest form. Now along these lines I don’t recommend drinking the water without treating it, as you are collecting it off of a rooftop and as it comes down it can collect bacteria. BUT there are ways to treat the water to use as drinking and of course its your opinion but to me it is a much better quality then the water from the city. But your plants don’t care if the water has dust particles in it, it doesn’t even care if mosquitoes have laid larvae in it, the dirt and root systems filter all these out.
How Much Rain
Generally speaking 1″ of rain x 1 sq. ft. = 0.623 gallons. So if you have 100sq feet ( a 10×10 roof) one inch of rain would gather about 62 gallons of water. If you have 1000 square feet (100×100 roof) and get an inch of rain you’ll get 623 gallons of water. So what if its only a quarter inch? Then you would get 155 gallons of water. See how much water you can collect just from one small rain? And what if you get an hours worth of rain? You can only imagine how much rain you’ll get then.
How To
Now this depends entirely on the amount of garden and the amount of water you want to collect. I started out with rain barrels. (and I still have yet to upgrade) But if you plan on watering your garden solely with rain water and if you have a good size garden I would recommend skipping over the rain barrels period. Start with a water tank. I personally would start in the 500 gallon tank range. I plan on upgrading soon to a 500 gallon tank or hopefully a 1000 gallon tank.
Right now though I have 3 – 65 gallon tanks and it lasts me about a week. So I have to count on it raining a week from after I started watering. It sometimes works out great but then sometimes I’m having to ship water because we didn’t get a rain soon enough. Plus I have to be out there manually switching to the next rain barrel after the first and second one is full. If you have one tank that the water goes into then much less trouble and work.
So basically you need:
A roof
Gutters around this roof
A storage tank
A pump
There is a handy little gutter diverted that I picked up at a yard sale that is PERFECT for harvesting rain. I’ve seen them at home improvement stores. So I would highly recommend that as well.
You set up an area, out of the way if possible but of course next to a down spout of the gutter. You will probably need to cut the gutter at a certain height to attach the gutter diverted to and just direct it to your storage tank. Remember also that a gallon of water roughly weighs about 8 lbs so a 500 gallon tank full is going to weigh 4000 lbs. I would make sure that this tank is securely on the ground, on a stable flat ground.
Last but not least you need to pick up a pump. We picked one up at the local home improvement store for 50 bucks. We find this works perfectly for keep the flow steady but not too much. Using they siphoning method is a pain in the neck and then the tank has to be elevated which can cause a hazard at a heavy weight.
Depending on where you purchase these products it can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Personally I try to stay in the few hundred dollar range and use what I have around me. The last thing I have to do is purchase a larger water tank and have found some steals on craigslist. Wherever you find the products though you will definitely appreciate and benefit from harvesting roofwater.
One last note: Be careful of open container standing water as this can produce mosquitoes and that’s just no fun and can potentially spread diseases. There are products out on the market that can be added to the water but the best (and cheapest) way I found is adding vegetable oil to the water and mixing it in. The oil floats to the top and creates a barrier keeping the bugs from laying eggs and if there are eggs in there, the larvae dies since it can’t survive with a layer of oil on the top.
Some helpful links I’ve found during my research online:
http://www.watercache.com/education/rainwater/
http://therainwaterstore.net/index.php// (personally I’ve never bought anything from here but thought I’d include it)
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