Mission Endure 49: Are You Harvesting Rainwater?
I grew up in southern California where water was scarce. When I graduated from college we made the choice to serve our country in the US Air Force and we began living a nomadic lifestyle. We have lived all across America; twice on the east cost, twice in northern California, a short time in Arkansas, once in South Korea, and for the last 26 years in southern Illinois. We have lived here in Illinois longer than any other place we have lived. We feel at home here. Unlike southern California, water is not scarce here. Most of the year we have plenty of rain or snow. Everything stays green all year long and in the summer time I have commented that it is like living in Eden. Everything, especially the weeds, grows well here in Illinois. In late July and most of August it is dry and it is the only time of the year we need to use supplemental water. We have a sprinkler system for watering the yard, but purchasing water for your lawn or garden is very expensive here. To water the lawn using our city’s water costs us about $25.00 per day that we water. Thankfully, we don’t have to water very frequently, but as you can see, it gets expensive very quickly. So, for the last several years we have used rain barrels to provide water for the garden. We have been using an EarthMinded 45 Gallon Rain Barrel similar to the one in the link, that is spliced into one of our downspouts so that if fills whenever we have a good rain. If it rains more than about a half inch it will fill the rain barrel. We have noticed that we save about 50% on our outdoor supplemental water costs by using the rainbarrel to harvest water for the garden.
We don’t typically need a lot of supplemental irrigation water, so we use the rain barrel primarily in July and August. We have been pondering the idea of installing a more elaborate system that will allow us to harvest enough rainwater to irrigate our lawn also. Something similar to this system. Link. If we were to use the IBC Tote system coupled with a small water pump I could provide free water, under pressure, to both our expanding garden and the rest of our property. In places where water is expensive this might be a good alternative. I plan to upgrade our rainwater system this year to see how much it helps us with our water bill.
There are places, particularly in the arid western half of the US, where harvesting of rainwater is against the law. The authorities would rather have the rain water that runs off of your roof replenish the aquifer. I believe it does this equally when you use it to water your garden and plants. Please check with your local authorities to make sure you are OK to harvest rainwater in your community before you spend money setting up a system to harvest it.
Here is a YouTube Video from CityPrepper that shows the system he set up at his house in southern California: