who has rain barrels?

[inchworm]

Cool beans! I guess I need to start browsing Craigs List.

Inchy

 

[Aidenbaby]

How do you know how many rain barrels to get and use? It just recently became legal in Colorado to partake in this (water rights issues). My house is approximately 1300 sq ft. Rainfall in my area is 14" per year with the heaviest month being in May at 2.5" for the month. Help?

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I believe the volume of storage needed should be equal to the area of your roof multiplied by the amount of rainfall you expect to store. So if you store the whole month of May, but not much more, then you should multiply 0.21 ft (which is 2.5") by 1300 sq ft. That gives you an answer in cubic feet, which you will have to convert to gallons, or whatever, to figure out your storage needs.

Note: To get your rainfall in feet you divide it by 12, because there are 12 inches in a foot. If you need help with your volume conversion, there are mathematical conversion sites on the internet.

 

[Lovechooks]

We have a 500 litre water tank Which I am assuming is a barrell for the greywater, a 1000 tank out the front for the pots, a 7,000 tank out the back yard and 2 more 5,000 tanks that when the 7,000 tank gets full they get pumped into these. My DH wants to get more we get a huge rebate here IF you get the lot plumbed back into the home which we will do at the moment it's all used on the garden but the rebate pretty much just pays for the plumber and we would rather do it ourselves.

We do not get mcuh rain here so it's a battle to fill the darn things really, but they are very necessary, we also have mains water and that is where all shower/toilet water comes from however we are on severe restrictions and cannot use any water ever for the garden from the mains.

 

[ABHanna4d]

are polutants carried down from the rain and into your rain barrel? We are looking into getting rain barrels and I am just concerned that the thick cloud of polutants that looms over the city and settles with a heavy rain will end up settling down my roof and into my barrel.
Is this a concern?

 

[dragonlaurel]

are pollutants carried down from the rain and into your rain barrel? We are looking into getting rain barrels and I am just concerned that the thick cloud of pollutants that looms over the city and settles with a heavy rain will end up settling down my roof and into my barrel.
Is this a concern?

If you're near a pretty polluted area, get a filter on your rainwater system. You can use a a diverter so the first (dirtiest) part of it just washes off the roof then lets the rest fill up your barrel. Read further back in the thread- somebody was talking about how to do a filter.

 

[chrissum]

I too have rain barrels, three total. Only last year and this year we are way above average on rainfall, 8-9 inches so far this year alone. Mine are also olive barrels from Greece bought at the local Orschelins farm and home and painted a cream color. I set mine up because I planted a dozen new trees at my house w/water tubes installed at each tree.

 

[xpc]

The easiest way to calculate the amount caught would be to use 1/2 gallon per square foot of house area, if your house is 35 feet by 30 feet then you have about 1000 square feet, times 1/2 equals 500 gallons per inch of rain. It is actually 0.625 gallons but there are inefficiencies of about 20% so I round down to 0.5 and be on the safe side.

A pre-flush diverter should be used as said before and can be as simple as a piece of 4" pvc pipe or a five gallon bucket and a rubber ball. If you ever looked inside of a wet/dry vacuum it is similar to that plastic ball that rises to the top when it fills with water so you don't suck water into the motor.

 

[ABHanna4d]

The easiest way to calculate the amount caught would be to use 1/2 gallon per square foot of house area, if your house is 35 feet by 30 feet then you have about 1000 square feet, times 1/2 equals 500 gallons per inch of rain. It is actually 0.625 gallons but there are inefficiencies of about 20% so I round down to 0.5 and be on the safe side.

A pre-flush diverter should be used as said before and can be as simple as a piece of 4" pvc pipe or a five gallon bucket and a rubber ball. If you ever looked inside of a wet/dry vacuum it is similar to that plastic ball that rises to the top when it fills with water so you don't suck water into the motor.

we have a detached garage 18'x18' that is close to our vegetable garden so we are considering doing rain barrels to supply the water. OK, so that would be 18x18=324sq feet x 1/2 = 162 gallons of water per inch of rain. I know I did the math right, but WOW that just seems like alot of water for 1 inch of rain of our little garage!

 

[xpc]

It seems like a lot and here is the math that proves it - a 12" x 12" x 12" box is 1728 cubic inches, there are 231 cubic inches in a gallon which equals 7.5 gallon in one cubic foot, divide by twelve and you get 0.625 gallons per inch. You can lose up to 20% by evaporation, splatter, and roof material absorption that's why I round down to 0.5 gallons.

Though not always needed a pre-wash diverter of a few gallons will allow the contaminants that settled on the roof between rains to be washed into a bucket so as not get into the rain barrel.