It's not that hard to do yourself. Use PVC for your plumbing. Leave a few critical joints unglued so you can take it apart when you want to. Set it all up so you can drain it if you want. Remember that water will pick up load (dirt) when it goes faster and drops it when it goes slower. Give it a way to drop roof dirt before it gets deep into your system.

Store the water as high as you can if you are going to gravity feed it around your property. Mine is only 6 -8 feet up and the pressure is pretty weak. Build in an automatic overflow for when the system is full. Screen all your inlets and outlets to keep the mosquitoes at bay. I use a garden hose fitting for the outlet, have no complaints abt. it.

I deliberately set mine up so that new water would tend to push out old water, in case stuff grew in there. My barrels are outside so if something drips a little I don't have to care. If it was inside I could use it for thermal mass.

just my 2 cents worth, how much water do you realy want to save? to me unless you are getting a good supply of rain fall in which case saving water for dryer periods may not be that advantagous, then small drums aren't going to stay full for long.

when i lived in the suburbs i had a 1000 gallon water tank for drinking mostly and some garden use, i soon worked out that 1000 gallons was not going to do much to make me water sufficient for our long hot dry summers if i used it in the garden.

so maybe the starting point should be how much water you need to use over a given period other than starting with having X amount of drums which when plumbed together may not carry that much water, and even if the drums are cheap or free the pvc to connect them is going to add the the cost + 10 or so drums is going to take up some room.

here in aus' we can get a 5400 imp gallon water tank for around $1800AUD. that amount of water would probably come close to supplying a couple with their household water needs for most of the year. the best part you know there are no contaminaants in the tank so the water can be used for drinking or food use.

len

mail len

lens garden page

Adding up the volume of the containers I listed in my original post I came up with 1250+-.
What would be the amount I'd like to store versus the amount I am capable of storing with y present investment are two different things.Other than fittings my present outlay is $0.00.Haow many people say say they have the capability of saving that much water with no outlay?
With the relatively small collection area I have I can glean about 250 gallons with a 1/4 inch of rain.
I'd like to be able to use it for the household but at present am satisfied having it only for the garden.
I am on city water and have very little pressure.I use pumps to water because I am tired of the lousy pressure I get every time the lady next door fills her washing machine.(at least that what I think every time I turn on the hose.)
All of this is a moot point. I started saving water because of a 4 year drought, the lousy pressure, the cost of metered water from the city. Even if I could only save 50 gallons,that's 50 gallons I am not pulling out of the city's system and paying for treated water that I am going to put on my plants and compost piles.
What i am searching for is a way to store the most oamount of water ina given footpring of space. THe only way I can do that in my suburban setting is build vertically.

I am looking to do this. Questions:

First, can you design a "trap" like you have in your kitchen and bathroom to trap the dirt off the roof before it hits your barrel?

Second, can you use PVC to string together several 55 gallon drums or what have you for additional water storage?

Third-should you drain in winter in my area?

Boy! tallk about thread ressurection!
There is a method to install a "trap" arrangement to capture the initial runoff effectively diverting the clean water into the storage container(s).
I used pvc at first but the rigid connectors proved to be a pain.
I wound up using barbed fittings and clear vinyl hose.
As far as draining is concerned I would say yes but it would depend how inventive you are and where the storage is located.