If the roof of your home is made of metal or non-asbestos/non toxic materials you could direct the water from the gutters into storage barrels. When one fills up you move the hose to the next one. The roof of a house will collect a great deal of water. Some use more sophisticated collection systems such as the one described in Mollison's Designers Manual. The more complicated safeguards do not apply since you are not drinking the water.

Fireraven9
What potent blood hath modest May. - Ralph W. Emerson

If you do have a toxic roof substance, you can sling a big tarp over the roof area and collect the cleaner water in a barrel. Mulching with organic materials collects and holds water.

I use a Japanese style rainchain attached to the edge of the roof at the point where the most water pours off. The water goes down through copper "cups" with holes in the bottom, and into a catch-barrel. I've been using a big antique Chinese egg-pickling urn over 3' tall to catch and hold the water. Then I use a big dipping ladle to water my container plants from it.

It is also important to consider water containment so that the rain water that falls on your garden stays there long enough to soak deep into the soil. Mulch helps a site retain water as do swales, even small ones strategically located can reduce water runoff.

I moved to this farm from Sacramento, CA, where it can be quite arid! Tho we lived then in the city, I always kept quite a yard garden, intensively planted. I was able to buy a used 500 gallon stock tank for 40.00, transportable in a pickup. I kept rain and city water in that tank in the garden..it cooled me off in 100 degree gardening of my heavilly mulched beds. I ran a small sump pump in it and watered the whole garden from it 3X per week when needed. Wonderful thing, and I miss it here i KY where we could easily fill that with rainfall alone!
Our family uses filtered rainwater out here for food and drink needs. I improvised gutter that would run into food grade plastic barrels and ice chests. I have read a site that has a gizmo that allows 11 gallons to flow off before the rest is collected -your roof gets flushed off before your water collects in a holding tank.
Right now, cheap and simple are our motto here....I have improvised a screen that keeps larger particles out. For your garden purposes this wouldn't matter so.
Good Luck! i dream of a garden cistern in a few years above our gently sloping vegie patches. Rain collected off the garden tool shed ( not yet built) and gravity fed on down to the raised beds.
Toni in KY

Over in the Soil and Mulch forum there is a thread called "Collecting Rainwater"

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg051434479685.html?11

There are various things you might find usefull.

Yes, thanks. I saw it earlier today. Lots of good info!
Dana

Is most currently used roofing material non-toxic? Part of our roof was reshingled about 5 years ago. The rest of the shingles could be up to 30 years old. Is asbestos or toxin laden shingles only a problem with older roofing materials?

I'm planning on putting in a small rain water collection system in the next couple of weeks. I was planning on just redirecting the water from the gutters into garbage cans with a tap and an overflow. I'll be using it in the garden, not for human consumption.

Thanks,
Kathy

i allso use rain water from the gutters. i have shingles, i never thought about the shingles being toxic. we just put a new roof on, are the new ones bad? if so i am going to beat my hubby for not letting me put on a metal roof.. i wish i would have ben on garden web much sooner. MUMS ;O)

I have been collecting rain water for years and have been collecting large amounts for a few years.
I use gold fish to keep the insect population in check.
I use a plain ole trash can with a plastic bag as a liner.
I rarely use "city" water in my yard, almost never.
in fact yesterday for the first time in a year, I did use some city water to water down one of my worm-crate farms.
and the only reason I used the city water is because it is colder than rain/barrel water thus causing the worms to drop their eggs faster. one way to increase a worm population.
it all leads back to compost

I have 3 40 gal trash cans WITH wheels that I set out when it starts pouring rain. So far, these have worked great.

I have no gutters. I use 10 5-gallon pails below the roof edge to catch the drips. The other side of the roof drains onto the flower bed, so those plants are taken care of. I usually use the water within a few days so I can catch a storm that might come along. It's not pretty, but it will help until I can afford gutters. I will probably use big trash cans after I get the gutters, but I'd love to have a couple of those nice barrels they sell with a gravity feed hose and all......oh well, one can dream....

A quick-&-cheap way to catch water (esp for emergency drinking water) is to suspend a clean new plastic tarp between two poles set in the ground (tall fenceposts work fine). Set a clean garbage can nearby, & let the water run from the angled tarp into the can.

Before everyone jumps on me about garbage cans not being food-grade, I'm way ahead of you. Lining the can with a food-grade plastic bag would be preferable, but as the title indicates, this is an EMERGENCY solution. Clean water in a clean garbage can is far superior to most ground water or other standing water. I am assuming that you are smart enough to not let the water stand in the garbage can, but to transfer it to something safe, like a clean bathtub or containers. Anyone who feels they can't drink water from clean plastic obviously isn't in an emergency situation.

Sue

I use old gutters positioned (got them from some ones remodeling, a 8ft section of new vinyl gutter is not that expensive) under the drip line of the roof to catch water in a large containers that I have. You can find in some areas recycled 55 gal food grade drums. My brother in law got some from a pickle processing plant, $8.00 each.
I also use my section of gutter under the drip line to re fill my above ground swimming pool. Sometimes people get tired of there pools so these would make a great water storage, you wouldn't need all the pool acesories.
Water bed matress would work for water if you had a place so they wouldn't get punctured. Can buy them cheap at garage sells. In some real arid regions they loose so much water to evaporation they use real large rubber/plastic bladders for water storage for animals.
Lindag

Hey rain_man !

I just checked out your website... Way to go my friend! I am really impressed... Keep up the good work!

Take care! :)

We got our food grade barrels free from a soft drink bottling company. Had to clean out all the syrup first. Works great. Haven't yet bought the goldfish for eating algae and mosquitoes. Our tops are hinged so you can look in and see how much is left. We built frames so they sit about a foot off the ground and there by have gravity to feed water to soaker hoses in garden quite a distance away.

http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wlr/PI/pdf/covington-rain-barrels.pdf
Good luck

I didnt see anyone follow up the question about toxic roof shingles (unless I didnt read carefully, :))

I too have an older house (built in the 30s) so would be curious about this

I have five 40 gallon trash barrels under my porch. They're in line like a V. At the point is where the gutter comes off the roof into the first barrel. I have pvc pipe connecting them near the top. I put them in for times of drought. I use them mostly for making compost tea. I think it was Mother Earth magazine had an interesting article during this past summer on cisterns etc. Bermudians use their roof water for drinking (and everything else).

Make your own rain barrel. Check the link (http://www.gardengatemagazine.com/tips/40tip11.html) for some useful plans.

Here is a link that might be useful: Make a rain barrel

You can also link several barrels together with the 'overflow' hoses. When one is full, the water gets transferred to the second one, then to the third, etc.
Jo

I have a newer roof as well and would love to catch water! If we have the composite shingles are those bad? The last thing i want is to kill my plants. I also was planning on changing my driveway and though that burying a large drum and having it drain there would be nice coupled with a sub-pump to get it back out. Since I live in So Cal. I am wondering it it is even worth the endevor?

-Jman

One of our gutter downspouts is aimed at the top of a 32 gallon Rubbermaid trashcan. During the rainy season, the can overflows & flushes itself out & we collect water from it to add to a 165 gallon covered plastic container in the garage which is used to water indoor plants during the dry times of the year. When the rainy season ends & the trashcan/rainbarrel water starts getting too funky for indoor use, we insert airstones & leachate from the worm beds, & make worm wash or tea for all our plants.

If money or space were no problem, my first choice would be a pond for collection of all roof runoff.

yeah but it is easier to get water out of a barrel than it is to get it out of a pond! I have a lovely pond, and except for things that are too far for a hose or a watering can, I don't use the water from it much. I do use a bucket and rope for those plants on the far side.

When I lived in town I used blue plastic barrels that had been used for making soap to catch water from the gutters. It was an old house, but I didn't worry about it much. I mean, the water from the gutters was ending up in my garden anyway... I was just making it more useful. I too used feeder goldfish to kill mosquitos. I didn't have a fancy hose set up there, but just dipped my watering can into them. Saved me a lot of water back when I had to pay for it.

I will have rain barrels again when my house is built. I don't know how much water I will be "saving" since I am on a well, and it is all part of the same water system. I am surrounded by water, so it is hard to think of having to save it. We have a 2 acre lake, two smaller ponds, a swampy wetland, several ditches and seasonal springs, a river.... and a well that never goes dry. Nothing like abundance! I worried a bit last summer when we had a drought and our lake got very low, as did the river, but even with having to water our garden and supplying water for two households, our well never even threatened to go dry. Of course, there are only 4 people total, and none of us are daily shower takers or chronic toilet flushers! Still, I was impressed.

I still look forward to my rain barrels though. We have a large shop that has no gutters and currently the rain water flows into ditches that fill our lake. During the summer months this is the only water the lake gets. So, alas, no rain barrels for the shop. I don't want to carry water that far anyway. Sigh.

I found a great resource for rain water harvesting. I have a small system in place now that I use on the a small flower garden, but am thinking of upgrading to something a bit more grand. If any of you guys are interested in rain water collection you should check out

www.watercache.com

Its a nice resource

I bought a rain barrel from sportsmansguide.com. I don't know if $80 qualifies as cheap but I'm really happy with it. It holds I think 30 some odd gallons (which I have yet to use up completely between rains) It looks like a regular barrel but it's made out of pvc and the back of it is flat so that is sits flush against the wall under your downspout. It has a screen over the top opening to keep bugs out and a faucet at the botton to attach a hose or whatever.

This week I completed my rainbarrel project. I bought a food grade barrel for $10 at a garage sale, installed a spigot, and bought gutter for our shed. (We get very heavy snow here, and big ice dams on the roof of the house, so gutters on the house are kind of a joke) Anyway, the total bill was under $100, so I was pretty pleased. Now all I need is some rain!

Hi all,

Was wondering, is there a cheap way that one could collect water before it reaches the drain? Bath water, shower water, dish water...........I am trying to find a way to collect this water to use it to water the grass. We are in an area where there has been hardly any rain for a long time and we have water restrictions in place. Any ideas, comments would be most appreciated. Also, is bath water, dish water etc. ok for the grass?

We keep a bucket in the shower to collect water that comes out before the hot water.

In the summer I keep a tub of warm soapy water and one of clean rinse water in each sink. The rinse water comes from the water gained while waiting for hot water. These are dumped outside at various times of the day. But only when it's really dry outside or if I have time.

If you keep a slop bucket for used wash water (think of what you lose just rinsing garden veggies) also add any drinks that family members haven't finished. It all adds up.

You can use the water that is dripping from your air conditioner through a dripline to water your plants.

Bathwater can be used, assuming you weren't filthy, for the first wash of handwashables, or for washing the car or floor. Then it can be used to flush toilets.
Add ammonia to the water for washing the floors, then throw the dirty water on the grass or garden--makes a terrific fertilizer.

Someone posted about keeping a 50 gallon garbage can with wheels in her garage. He/she ran a hose from the washer to the can (probably through a slightly opened back door) and wheeled the washer water to where she needed it. You could (for pennies) add a spigot on the bottom of the can and run a soaker hose to your grass and not have to wheel it anywhere.

I'd like to recycle my canning water, but that's a bit hard of you are doing load after load.

Rainbarrels can be made for very little. Food grade barrels are offered for free from carbonated beverage bottling companies. Add a spigot on the bottom and a hole at the top for the drainpipes. I have 150 gallons of water after each small rain from ours.

I have heard of people disengaging the drain under their sinks and letting them run to 5 gallon buckets kept under the sink which they took outside.

With regard to shingles:

Asbestos is a mineral. In essence, it's a rock. It doesn't dissolve in water. It is non-toxic, in that it doesn't have a poisoning effect. Its harmful effects are mechanical; your lungs (or, possibly, gut, though I don't think anyone's ever eaten enough to make them sick) object to having lots of little spiky bits of rock stuck in them, and the resulting inflammation creates conditions favorable to the development of disease. When asbestos insulation is removed from inside buildings, one of the ways it is kept out of the air (and the lungs of those who will soon be breathing it) is to wet everything down.

So... collecting the water off the roof and pouring it on your plants isn't going to increase your asbestos exposure any more than letting it run off the downspouts onto the lawn.

I _might_ start wondering, if the roof was weathering badly, whether water off the roof would be safe to drink, but that concern would apply to more modern fiberglass-reinforced shingles too. One thing I would worry about is any sort of roof system that includes moss-growth inhibitors, whether applied (zinc strips) or embedded in the shingles (in many new "asphalt" type shingles, and maybe other types too). Also, some shake roofs are treated with preservatives that might be iffy as a steady diet for plants intended to be fed to people.

Katey

To expound upon what Katey said yesterday, Asbestos is a silicate mineral. That is, made mostly of SiO2. So is quartz. So is talc. So are most of the other minerals, light and dark, in granite. So is window glass. Silicate is like tinkertoys: you can plug this basic shape together in many ways to make many different things. Even if it did dislove the result would be no more toxic than talc, or granite, or the glass you drink out of...

Dan

Has anyone talked to a shingle maker? I have new shingles (live in Indianapolis, thanks to hail we all have new shingles) and really want to use a rain barrel to water my vegetables. Not sure of the risks?

Anyone see any research on this or have tested the water?

Hello
This is a pretty old post but I recently finished a rainwater collection system Collected from runoff from the roof it goes first through a gravel filter then under the gravel filteer in the pond the overflow from this goes into the main grow area.. The advantage is that it automaticly back flushes the filters and of course there is a weak ferti;izing effect from fish waste. What I did not consider
is just how much water comes off a roof during an eight inch rain lol Had fish in the kitchen as well as the garden lol..Have since installed a bi pass valve but as yet have not figured how to make it automatic .Of course since I built it we've had the most severe drought in history.lol
Mary I've tested my water frequently because of the fish
But have never had a problem .I'ts invariably in the pH 7 though occasionally there is some slight acid.
Most shingles would have anything toxix washed away rather
quickly.Of course there is always dust and bird droppins.
If you have a brand new shingles let two or three rains pass. If fiberglass or asphalt there isn't really a problem. gary

Chris,
I really enjoyed your blog! What a wonderful idea. Thanks for sharing it!
I tried to post to your sire, I have found cheaper new barrels.
If anyone is near Brigham City, Utah, there is a plastic container company that sells new 55 gal. blue plastic barrels for $38. each!
This is the best deal in town!
I have bought several and plan to buy more when our tax refunds come back.

I have a cabin in the forest and want to harvest rain water. I have alot of trees and am concerned about mosquitos gathering in an open system. Any experience with this would be appreciated.

no problem using grey water on edibles here! we only water the root zone after all, lots doing it.

we invested in a rainwater tank cheap comes from the amount of water it holds for a very long period, we also use 200 litre drums for mostly our clothes washing, ours are sealed so that mosquito's can't get in see a pic on our permaculture essay page.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens permaculture and bio-char page

Try food grade recycled 55 gallon barrels. Use a diverter and a slow sand filter for very clean water.

Here is a link that might be useful: slow sand water filter