Quote:
Originally Posted by timberrr59
Good job for collecting the water. I have used some of that plastic screen repair screening material to seal off where connections are exposed to mosquitoes. They love to get into the stored rainwater! It doesn't take much to keep them out. I can make some really good lather with that soft water. I just use some Williams and sometimes some Old Spice mug soaps. Later I plan to experiment with some of these high-class soaps that I read about in the Forums. Keep up the collecting. Think about this: IT IS ILLEGAL TO COLLECT RAINWATER IN COLORADO! It has something to do with eastern Colorado water rights about possible diminishing the water in rivers and streams. According to what I learned at the Cibilo Nature Center Rainwater Harvesting Seminar, only about 4% of rainwater ever makes it to streams and rivers because of soaking into the ground, evaporation, vegetation, etc. The state of Colorado has "ownership" of the rain!!! After learning that, I never listen to my John Denver records ever again!... RRR
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G'day all,
my partner and I have a small hobby farm 40 minutes due east of Perth, Western Australia. We are completely reliant on rain water and a small low draw bore and small dam with a mill on it. The bore and dam supply the stock and garden water, we have a couple of acres of garden, a mixture of both Australian natives and exotics, also building up a pretty large veggie garden. Nearly all our roofs have tanks off them, and the tanks can all be pumped to the main house tank. All up we have 38,000 gallons of water, we only need 14 inches of rain to fill all our tanks. Out average rainfall has dropped from about 40 odd inches in the 50's to about 28 to 35 inches at the present time. So we are slowly drying out. At the end of our summer we generally have about 8,000 gallons left in the 20,000 gal house tank, and about 6,000 gals in the other rain water tanks. Another 20,000 gallon tank would be installed in the future, as we will still get the odd wetter year like we are having now. Back in the seventies I think councils in the city discouraged rainwater tanks because of mosquitos, also the trend to much smaller house blocks, so city people cannot have veggie gardens or chooks like they did a few years ago. I guess we have spent about $25,000 in tanks pumps mill etc over the years, but it is nice not to be beholden to the govt for water. They have forced licensing of private bores recently if they are for commercial use, and there is talk of doing the same for rainwater, there will be considerable outrage from us country folk when the bring that in.
We use rainwater for all house hold functions.
Kind regards
Gordon