Why Waste Water?

On the news the other night there was a story about a drought ridden area in Texas where the wells had gone dry. Except for one family, everyone was having to truck water in just to exist. The one exception was a family that had installed a rainwater collection system. Even with little to no rainfall they were able to supply their estimated 1,500 gallon a month need.

From our days of sailing we were pretty aware of the ease and practicality of collecting rain for our needs. On some islands where the only water comes from desalination systems water can be nearly as expensive as diesel fuel.

When we moved to Luna Azul we installed a rain collection system and were amazed, in an area that only gets 17 inches of annual rainfall, how much of our needs could be met from the rain.

In case you have never calculated how much water you are letting get away, here is the simple formula. I will use our 30 ft by 30 ft barn as an example. Converting ft to inches= 360″x360″=129,600 sq inches. So if it rains for one hour at 1″/hr you have 129, 600 cu inches divided by 231 cu in / gallon = 561 gallons of water. In one hour!!!

Probably the hardest thing to comprehend how many gallons a few square feet of roof can gather.   Grab a 12 ” ruler.  Turn it left and right, up and down and them away from you. There’s your cubic ft.   Can you imagine being able to put 7.5 one gallon gas cans in that space?  Well you absolutely can.  Warning:  If you try this at home,  be careful cutting that eighth gas can in half   This may seem like a tedious exercise but it helps you understand how much rain you can gather from even a small roof.

We used some food grade 50 gallon drums to collect the water  to supplement the gray water system in the garden.   In the summer we watered almost every day and it seemed like it hardly ever rained but we always had water for the garden. It’s magic.

On a lighter note, there is much conversation and speculation on the future scarcity and extreme cost of water. Many of last decades oil speculators are now buying up water rights. This may be a good time to start incorporating rain collection into your building plans and projects.

Rain water may end up being more than just something Grandma catches to wash her hair.

There are some tricks for storage and for not collecting dust and dirt.  I would be more than happy to answer any questions.