Next to air, water is the most important thing you need to sustain life. You can only live about three days without water. Regardless of the area you are in, it is always a good idea to some water stored water or better yet a source of continuous water such as a well, stream, pond, lake or even a pool.
Being in a hurricane prone area it is always good to have some water stored up and what better way than to just catch what nature brings. Luckily, I am in an area where it is legal to catch rain water…yep, believe it or not, there are some areas where this action is not allowed.
For me, I do have a very small well. I also have setup a very simple rain water catchment or some call it rain harvest system. As of right now, I don’t have rain gutters on my house, which is the most efficient way of channeling rain water into barrels. What I did is setup six 55 gallon water barrels under the eves of the house. When it rains, the water runs off the roof, into these barrels. That equates roughly 300+ gallons of water.
Here is a quick video of how my water barrels are set up. These are food grade barrels.
This water can be used for flushing the toilet if need be, washing clothes, watering plants, or even drinking after being properly filtered. Regardless of the reason, it is always a good idea to ensure you have a clean water supply, like I wrote about here in Four ways to ensure you have a clean water supply.
I do need to drill some drain holes in each barrel so that the water doesn’t puddle up to the mosquito basket, if you have some ideas how I should do that, please leave me a comment.
14 Sep 2015
0 CommentsSimple Rain Water Catchment System
Being in a hurricane prone area it is always good to have some water stored up and what better way than to just catch what nature brings. Luckily, I am in an area where it is legal to catch rain water…yep, believe it or not, there are some areas where this action is not allowed.
For me, I do have a very small well. I also have setup a very simple rain water catchment or some call it rain harvest system. As of right now, I don’t have rain gutters on my house, which is the most efficient way of channeling rain water into barrels. What I did is setup six 55 gallon water barrels under the eves of the house. When it rains, the water runs off the roof, into these barrels. That equates roughly 300+ gallons of water.
Here is a quick video of how my water barrels are set up. These are food grade barrels.
This water can be used for flushing the toilet if need be, washing clothes, watering plants, or even drinking after being properly filtered. Regardless of the reason, it is always a good idea to ensure you have a clean water supply, like I wrote about here in Four ways to ensure you have a clean water supply.
I do need to drill some drain holes in each barrel so that the water doesn’t puddle up to the mosquito basket, if you have some ideas how I should do that, please leave me a comment.