For the first couple of years that we have lived and gardened here, we have used water from our well as primary irrigation source and the occasional raindrop as the secondary source. My wife has pushed to have a rainwater harvesting system for some time now and I have finally come around to favoring the idea.
My resistance to rainwater harvesting was due to the expense of setting up a system and the usefulness of a system. What I mean by usefulness is...if it is raining enough to keep a good supply of water in the tanks than we really will not need to be watering much anyway...if it is NOT raining much and refilling the tanks than we will probably run out and still need to water with well water. Also, if it isn't raining very often (which seems to be the normal around here) I really want the runoff to be watering my lawn area and house foundation area and not filling up rainwater tanks.
Solutions to the above problems have been reached. Right now anyway, we do not have the house hooked up to any collection system so the rainfall on the house still waters things as it always has. The collection areas we are using are from the greenhouse roof (55 gal) the garden shed (55 gal - but we will add more tanks here) and from the larger side of the barn's metal roof (1600 gal).
Price for the tanks and materials was about $1200. The biggest expense was the large tank...the "Black Monster" with its 90" diameter and 68" height...followed by the cost of the guttering.
To fill the 1600 gallon tank only requires about 2.7" of rainfall over the 33' by 30' metal roof. To fill the 55 gallon plastic drum on the greenhouse only requires about 1.7" of rain and even less than that to fill the one off the shed. Hopefully we will get enough sporadic showers and storms to keep us watering through the summers here in the parched area we live...and garden.
UPDATE 3/12/2009: Well, we had a nice rain event. 2.9" in our gauge so far, rain still in the forecast. And, it filled the 1600 gallon tank! What fabulous timing.
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