Rainwater Catchment

There are two basic ways to harvest rainwater for your garden, one is a simple arrangement of gutters on the edge of the roof with the downspouts directed to your water tanks, whether they are concrete cisterns or plastic rain barrels. You can then save the water until the garden is beginning to dry out and use the water to give the garden a drink.

The other way is a little more complex. This is actually contouring your garden to direct all the rain that runs across it to a lower spot where you plant trees, shrubs and other plants that would like to have more water than they would get elsewhere in your yard while reducing water runoff to the street. This type of rainwater harvesting is often a feature of permaculture landscaping. It is also often seen in desert areas to more easily grow plants requiring more water than the rest of the landscape receives naturally.

Raining and no gutters! ;-(

While some of you may prefer to buy complete systems to harvest your rainwater I'm sure many of you are interested in less expensive, do it yourself options, so here are a couple of videos to give you some ideas.

You might also want to check this out; Description and photos of building a 4,000 liter tank of wood with a plastic liner.

When most of us think of a cistern we think of an underground tank made of concrete. I know I think of isolated ranch houses dependent on their rainwater catchment for household use with one of these cisterns next to the house and a hand pump at the kitchen sink. LoL, don't ask me where I got that notion, probably from watching old movies and reading books when I was a kid. However, this is still a very useful setup, especially if you live where water is in short supply. I know there are whole areas of Australia where there are no water wells and all water used in the home comes from the cistern.

In the case of using your rainwater for the household, you will need to filter it so that you don't have sand and other debris from your roof in your water. If you just use it for flushing toilets and washing clothes you probably won't need to do much of anything else to it. But if you are going to drink, cook or wash dishes with your rain water, you are going to want to filter and treat it to come up to potable water standards.

Quick & easy calculation, every square foot of roof surface will catch about half a gallon of water for every inch of rain.

Even if you live in an apartment you might be able to catch a little rain water for your balcony and houseplants. Even if you just save 1000 gallons a year, that is 1000 gallons less water that is being pumped out of an underground aquifer. Every little bit helps and if everyone will do their part to be water wise, then we can assure that the next generation will have safe drinking water.

Over pumping of underground aquifers is becoming a serious issue in the US. We are pumping water from deep in the ground that is not being replenished by rainfall. This is especially true for the Oglalla Aquifer which provides irrigation water to "America's Breadbasket" This is leading to desertification and may lead to serious Dust Bowl conditions if not stopped. We can all do our part by reducing our water use, recycling our grey water and by rain water catchment. This article has some more about the problem of over pumping of the Oglalla Aquifer.