I have gone all in with growing my own food lately and doing most of it hydroponically. Growing this way it is best to use dechloronated water and the easiest way to do this is to use rain water or if from the tap let it set around for at least 24 hours.
So I started doing researchIn building my own water storage system and this lead me to rain water collection.
Free Water Being Wasted
As I did my morning walk I was looking around at homes and all the rain gutters just flow into the yard or worse into the street. This is a lot of water that can be used for plant watering without driving up your water bill. I’m sure we all have some sort of house plants around or a small garden and keeping them alive is adding to your water bill. Don’t know about you but ours gets in the neighborhood of $200 every other month. Hmmm maybe I should just start wearing my clothes longer.
If your roof is 1,000 sq ft (this is a small home) and a nice little 1″ rain storm comes along guess how much water you can get? The answer is about 625 gallons! Now if you captured that it would take care of the average homes house plants for quite a while.
Build Your Own Collection System
Their are commercial collection systems of different sizes and cost. I saw one at Lowes the other day for $120 and it was about 50 gallons I think. Saw another system for $400 for 205 gallons at a landscape store.
How about making your own for under $20? Worst case maybe $30-40 for a 55 gallon and the ability to expand it. You just need to get a hold of a 55 gallon drum which I found out you can get typically for free from car washes (clean it very well) or soda bottling plants or other locations. They use them and just throw them out so they may be happy to give them to you. The worst case, you can buy them for generally $25 or less.
Get a few PVC parts to connect several drums together, add a valve then connect your rain gutters to them and you are now collecting your rain water! The beauty is that you can add more capacity if you need it for a few bucks!
If you follow my other log http://hydroponicsiscool.com I’ll soon have a video and post about building one as I construct my water storage system. Mine will have some barrels for collecting rain (if it ever does again) and the others for holding tap water to naturally dechloronate before going into my hydroponic systems.
Just wanted to perk your imagination on ways you can save money on water if you like to garden or just have a couple house plants.