Hi there! While watching the fabulous thunderstorm and hail last night on the back porch I was dismayed by the amount of water coming out of my four gutter downspouts. When I turned the compost this morning more than half of it was dry and all I could think about was all that rain water that washed down to the street and into the sewer. What a waste!

I am thinking about making our own rain savers as purchasing one online seems way too costly. Can anyone tell me if/why I should not use a trash can for this purpose. Everything I see online seems to be made of food grade barrels. Ya'll have any other ideas?

Thanks!
Nina

Any vessel will work, I think the things you need to consider are:
- screen on top to keep particulate matter out
- something (bt product) to prevent mosquito larva
- an easy way to get the water out for use
- even the barrels they sell commercially only hold 50-60 gallons, that's not much water given that we don't have many rains in the summer but it is better than the storm sewer.
Here's an interesting site from the people who do this professionally for whole house systems. They are located in Dripping Springs, TX (lol)
http://www.rainwatercollection.com
Tony

Hi Tony, thanks for your thoughts on this. I agree that the trash cans are relatively small considering the amount of water that would come down our roof is huge however I do have four downspouts and I am willing to place a barrel under each one to collect as much water as possible - hopefully to reduce my water bill (which would make hubby happy) and to encourage good growth in my plants without the chlorine from tap water. Keep your fingers crossed.

Christina

The last house I lived in, I collected the rain water in a plastic barrel. I believe it was 50 gallons. It filled up in 5 minutes. It ran off the roof into the barrel.

Christina,

Check the post by Blake, a guest, titled "Rain Harvesting".
It apprears that he sells systems and has a website listed.

It might be worth a look.

Try this link for info. http://www.plastmo.com/rbdivert.html and http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt9707.html Or if you are really serious, live on some land try this. http://www.dancingrabbit.org/building/cistern.html Good luck, when you do it post a picture