Anyone have a rain catchment system?

[Hershmeister]

I'm getting ready to build a new house and i would like to set up a rain catchment system to use for gardening, chickens, and emergency use. Any tips/tricks are greatly appreciated!

[Cherokee Slim]

My neighbor runs his rain gutters into blue 55 gallon barrels, with overflow cascading into another barrel.  The city has talked to him about it & his garden that runs from the front of the house to the curb.  They don't like what it looks like but there aren't any ordinances against it.

Cherokee Slim

[Dane]

If I was building I would run into a basement filtration and storage then tie it into my house plumbing system. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[peejman]

I've got a purpose made 50 gal rain barrel attached to one of my downspouts.  I picked the particular downspout for two main reasons... 1) It's in the back where people won't see it, and 2) That one downspout gets water from a large area of my roof.  A typical summer downpour will fill it in a couple minutes. 

 

It looks a lot like this, though I added a screen to the downspout outlet to help prevent the crud that comes off the roof from blocking the screen that's on the barrel inlet.  I also put a mosquito dunk in it periodically through the summer.   The barrel sits in one of my flower beds and it's mostly covered by the eave so I have the barrel overflow hoses set so they dump into the bed.  Been thinking of putting in a 2nd one. 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2014 by peejman

[Guest theconstitutionrocks]

I'm getting ready to build a new house and i would like to set up a rain catchment system to use for gardening, chickens, and emergency use. Any tips/tricks are greatly appreciated!

If you want to drink it or use it for chickens, then a metal roof is probably a better choice than asphalt shingles (less chemicals). In EITHER case a good filtration/purification system is an absolute necessity. While I haven't looked at in depth (because frankly the 55 gallon barrel under my downspout works just fine) there are other places around the world that use a huge (several thousand gallon tank to drain the runoff into which is then pumped out through a filter, to the home. 

[VERO1]

A lot of folks around here buy one of the food grade barrels in the wire cages off of Craigslist etc. I believe they are around 275/300 gallon capacity.

[Guest lilfishbigpond]

[quote name="VERO1" post="1105780" timestamp="1391477311"]A lot of folks around here buy one of the food grade barrels in the wire cages off of Craigslist etc. I believe they are around 275/300 gallon capacity.[/quote] FYI these are called IBC totes. They do work well for holding water but I would think a 55gal drum would work much better for catching one downspout. A metal roof with everything draining into a below ground concrete(?) tank would be awesome though. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[JWC]

I have a 500gal tank I catch water in. It's pretty simple - gutter on back of shed going to tank. The roof is tin. Pop lost the top driving home with the tank and drove the route back and never found it. I'd drink it in an emergency but I have no idea what was previously stored in it. I just use it for the garden run through soaker hoses. It works pretty well until it gets real low.

[Ted S.]

I'd like to set up a few and daisy chain them together, and build an enclosure so the neighbors don't call on us for having "an eyesore". I plan to keep them 18"-24" off the ground so they can gravity feed to soaker hoses in the garden in a pinch.

[peejman]

I'd like to set up a few and daisy chain them together, and build an enclosure so the neighbors don't call on us for having "an eyesore". I plan to keep them 18"-24" off the ground so they can gravity feed to soaker hoses in the garden in a pinch.

 

 

Unless you've got special soaker hoses made specifically for a gravity fed system, they won't work.  Most soaker hoses are made to work off standard house water pressure ... 70 psi or so.  Your barrel will only generate about 2 psi. 

Edited March 31, 2014 by peejman

[kckndrgn]

I have one (2 trash cans tied together).  No pics but this is what I based the build on.

http://www.familyhandyman.com/smart-homeowner/how-to-build-a-rain-barrel/view-all

 

Had no problem running a soaker hose on it, just had to pull the flow restrictor out of the hose.

 

The difference I did from what the article was that I used floor drains on the bottom of the barrels.  The use of the union joints allows me to expand/reduce the system as needed (still has to be drained).

[Ted S.]

[quote name="peejman" post="1132490" timestamp="1396298428"]Unless you've got special soaker hoses made specifically for a gravity fed system, they won't work. Most soaker hoses are made to work off standard house water pressure ... 70 psi or so. Your barrel will only generate about 2 psi. [/quote] Well, that idea went down the drain. Sent from somewhere in the cosmos using magic...and bacon.

[Patrick Henry]

The current issue on line of Backwoods Home has an article on building a cistern.