Money Matters

If you like to garden and keep a green lawn, but do not like the high water prices that generally go along with that, then a rain collection system may be a viable option for you. For each inch of rain, a single square foot rainwater collector can yield you approximately 6/10 of a gallon of water. If you are fortunate enough to have your own house and can install a collection system into your down spout, imagine the savings in the summertime while watering the lawn or garden.

Follow up:

Before city plumbing even, people had to rely more on their ability to gather rain and well water to last them through dry periods. With rising resource costs, would it not behoove us to follow the same methods as our ancestors and gather some water ourselves?

Think about it... for a nice green lawn, it may take as much as 100 gallons of water for 1300 sq ft of grass per watering. I know for myself this equates to over $150 bills for water and sewer if I water the lawn on city water. City water generally also has the added downside of extra chlorine in the water, which doesn’t help the plants much.

Now, what if you had two rain barrels, both 60 gallons, gathering water from different downspouts, or daisy chained together... 120 gallons of water at your disposal for watering! that is 120 gallons of water that you do not have to pay to the city! Even if you only have a small 300 sq ft collection area, that should fill the 120 gallon container with just an inch of rain. Use your whole roof and you can easily get that amount.

Right now I am putting together some designs for a basic water collection system that daisy chains on itself, offering at least 300 gallons of water per block, but a minimum of 120 gallons per block.

Since the summer months would normally cost an extra $320 for me to keep everything green, and I want to cut at least $100 out of the water budget this year, that gives me about $150 that I want to try to design this system around. This should be an easy task if I do it right.

If anyone wants a copy of these designs when I get them done, just let me know. I will try to make them detailed as possible so anyone can assemble it.

Here is to a greener 2011