fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

[quote=DirtFarmer] Your plants need something on the order of 1" of water a week to thrive. If it rains, they get that water and the barrel is full. If it doesn't rain, the barrel is empty so it won't be there to water your plants. Also, 1" of water on your plants takes a fair amount of water. If your barrel is 50 gallons, that's about 5.9 cubic feet. Spreading that out to 1" depth you have about 70 square feet for your garden. I'm probably biased, having farmed about 5 acres, but 70 square feet is not enough space to grow much more than 2 meals.

Thank you! Mother Earth News always promoted rain barrels and my wife said we should put them under our downspouts. "But wait," I said, "if it's rained enough to fill the barrels then the garden doesn't need water but if it's dry and the barrels are empty, the garden needs water." She remains unconvinced. Like you said, a 55 gallon drum of rainwater would provide an inch of water for about 1/5th of my vegetables before it runs out and she can forget about her flowers.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

IMHO, the cost of the rainbarrels (and plumbing) would exceed the cost of public water or the electrical power used for well water.

srg

There you go. Now I have an earworm for the rest of the day. But it's a good one. Thanks.

buckwheat Loc: Clarkdale, AZ and Belen NM

What is rain?







(see where I'm from)

BArthur3

Well... there certainly haven't been any handed-down stories of family members or renters (for the bungalow) not having survived use -- and at least for family members, there's a history of good longevity, although I certainly wouldn't link that to consumption of the captured water!

Bill

bob44044 Loc: Ohio

Another example of excess government intrusion into the people's everyday lives. The next thing they'll be forbidding us from doing is breathing air.

ddgm Loc: Hamilton, Ontario & Fort Myers, FL

They won't forbid you, they will just require that you wear a metered inhaler.

Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

Most ground water has minerals in it. Often evident as stains around lawns watered with ground water.
As for the dust etc, it settles on the bottom, but there’s not much of it. The water delivery port is a few inches off the bottom, above any sediment. Yes, they can be cleaned but very rarely needed.
There are facilities to allow first rains to bypass the tank feeds, then close it off. There’s many little gadgets for various cleaning tricks. Like mesh over the guttering to keep leaves out. The nectar of the gods, rainwater?

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

My entire neighborhood drank rain water growing up. Every home had a cistern below the garage. A cinder block wall split the cistern for a filter. It tested as good for drinking. Then they put in city water. Amazingly then it tested bad for drinking. Lol. We always let it rain for about 30 minutes then we switched it to flow into the cistern if we were home. Which normally we were. After the final city water inspection we hooked it back up to the toilets and hose bibs so we could wash the cars water the lawn and flush without penalty. Lol

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

I was raised in a rural area where we had to have water delivered to our cysteine. We would divert rainwater into it only in the months with an "R" in their name. The gutters were diverted to flow into a filter trap filled with cleaned river gravel and charcoal. One of my chores was to help clean the cysteine from time to time. I'm surprised that I survived my early years.

There are far more efficient ways of collecting and storing rainwater today and using it for the non-potable water needs around the home.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

In Texas, "Surface water is defined as “water under ordinary flow, underflow, and tides of every flowing river, natural stream, lake, bay, arm of the Gulf of Mexico, and stormwater, floodwater, or rainwater of every river, natural stream, canyon, ravine, depression, and watershed in the state” and it belongs to the State. I'm sure other states have similar water rights regulations.

Stan

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

This is precisely why you all should NEVER visit San Antonio Texas! ALL the water that the city of San Antonio Water supplies (SAWS is it name!). It takes that rain water over 100 years to get through the earth to arrive at the Edwards Underground Aquifer! Then when it is pumped out from the aquafer, you could be getting water that is 100 years old! OMG it could just as easily be a thousand years, oh GOD! 10,000 years old, before Christ, Buda or Mohamid were on earth. Now that is some scary thoughts!

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Water that's 1000 or more years old is clearly without the benefits of modern pollution.