Learn me rainwater catchment for gardening!

I'm wanting to build some kind of rainwater catch system so I'm not jacking up my water bills for my planter beds, but I'm running into questions as to what's the most effective use of my money. My goal is to find food-safe containers used for transport like the barrels used for onions or the blue plastic ones on farms; but I'd like to pick some people's brains on what systems they have.

For the record, my gutters are all tied into two drainpipes that overspill onto the street, so it'll be very easy to tie the system together.

We've had one for many years- the sum of three barrels on one side of my garage and 1 on the other.  It's a big surface, so filling isn't a big deal.

But you can make them many ways- there are a number of pre-made kits that look reasonably nice, but they are more expensive.

We have 55 gallon plastic drums that used to be filled with cocktails.  Easy to work with, and with a brass fitting, you can use that to tap itself into the barrel.  There are a number of different colors for this- white, green, blue, black, etc.  Just shop around on CL or FB.  

We also have seen multi hundred gallon containers at one of the same sites.  Had I had that as an option, I may have started with it, instead.  On one hand, they are easier to deal with- there's a nice hole at the low point on the bottom that you can just use normal plumbing fittings to adapt; on the other hand, they are transparent- so you need to cover them to prevent growth inside.  Paint to a nice wood surround....  

Both need some decent foundation so that they stay stable.  So factor that in, too.  Concrete blocks work great.

The diverters can be a rabbit hole to go down- there are small adapters that you can buy that divert a hose size; you can fabricate a diverter pipe on your own; you can just pour it straight in with a high drain to use.   I started with the last, went to the first, and am looking to make the 2nd now.  Winter is a real issue because a full barrel will expand- so having a constant fill in the winter kind of sucks.

For the most part, with some very easy fabrication, you can easily exceed the capability of the premade kits for a whole lot less money.

I know nothing about rainwater collection, but maybe you just want to use 55 gallon rubber garbage cans with lids. They are already opaque and you can nest them together for winter storage. Are you thinking of pumping out the water with a small submersible utility pump? I'd also like to learn about filling and over flow diversion. How do you hide them from the complaining neighbors? 

Lavex Janitorial 55 Gallon Gray Round Commercial Trash Can $60 with lid.

You can get barrels for less than $20- https://annarbor.craigslist.org/for/d/bridgewater-gallon-food-grade-plastic/7587736695.html

And I do almost all gravity feed- just pumped up to a small raised bed.

These are what I have

The barrel formerly contained teat cleaner, yup there's farms around here, and I paid retail $50 Canadian, whole is $20 and up on Craigslist and FB. For the tap I drilled a hole a touch smaller than the tap inlet wrapped about 6 times with Teflon tape and it threaded in.

Pro tip find the ones with removable tops it will make it easier to add overflow.

I had a "system" in my Pittsburgh house.  I put that in quotes because it was pretty terrible, so maybe you can learn from my failures.

I had four blue barrels, one at each corner/downspout of the house.  I just cut the downspouts and used some of the flexible stuff like Rons posted to make an elbow into the barrels.  I cut a hole in the lid and epoxied on some aluminum window screen to catch the leaves and debris.  I installed a hose bib about 6" from the bottom and attached a soaker hose to it which I buried in the flower beds.  I figured I could open the valves overnight if we had a dry spell.

First problem was that the water and debris (leaves, twigs, etc) had enough force that they punched some holes in the screens.  The barrel quickly got lots of leaves, pine needles, and grit from the shingles. If I didn't clean them out regularly, the debris got pushed into the soaker hoses or just clogged the hose bib.  The frustrating part was that cleaning them meant disconnecting the hose, opening the valve to drain the water so I could handle them, and the debris often clogged the spiggot, which means I either left it for days to slowly drip out, or had to get a bucket to bail out the water.

Since it was Pittsburgh, I had to winterize them by draining the water and covering them.  I had plenty of busted hose bibs and cracked soaker hoses if I waited or didn't have time for the maintenance.

I also had a "hay infusion" problem.  If you never did a hay infusion in science class, it smells like rotting flesh.  The combination of decaying leaves, bird droppings that got washed off the roof, worms and bugs that fell in, and the existence of some hot summer days meant that the barrels started to cook up a concoction that made you gag when you walked outside.

I think what I'm saying is that I failed big time, so maybe don't do it my way.  I also wouldn't worry about food safe barrels.  Rain water isn't food-safe, and neither is your roof or the squirrel poop that might be on the roof, so the barrel's composition likely doesn't have much to do with how clean the water is.  Of course, you might want to transmission fluid barrels or glyphosate barrels for obvious reasons, but it doesn't really matter if it had tomato paste or linseed oil before you re-purposed it.  The water source (the roof) will make it non-food-safe after the first rain anyway.

One of the issues I had was the barrel overflow (which was garden hose size), which was no where large enough to deal with the flow (coming off almost half the roof).  It would just spill over and it's next to the deck (there is a drain for the spout it's attached to).

I basically cut the bottom out of a 5 gal bucket, placed on top off the barrel, put a seal on the bottom, weighed it down, and added an attachment to the original drain.  The trick was making it removable since I need to take it off to clean the screen effectively.

It would be great to get a few more barrels, but no real chance of having enough to make it over the summer since it almost never rains for about 6-8 months here!

I'm not sure I understand the need for them to be food safe. I've never seen a roof I was willing to lick. 
 

How do you prevent mosquito breeding?

In reply to SV reX :

The screen that stops twigs and leaves will also stop mosquito's from laying eggs in the water. Also if eggs were to be introduced to the catchment, the screen would prevent them from escaping so they would just die off likely. 
 

If i heard correctly, there is some silly laws that make water catchment illegal in some places. 
that said, i couldnt care less about the legality and i would like to set up a few barrels for my gutters. 

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

Hmm... 

The seems like a pretty tight seal for water catchment. Seems like a screen with a fine enough mesh would clog really easily. 
 

Good luck!

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

I think the places that restrict water catchment only limit it's use indoors. I've never heard of any restrictions for exterior use. 

SV reX said:

I'm not sure I understand the need for them to be food safe. I've never seen a roof I was willing to lick. 
 

How do you prevent mosquito breeding?

I used a screen in a small plastic pot to filter the debris out of the barrel.  And it kept the mosquitos out.

And while I appreciate the concern over food safe- it's one thing to have stuff that would naturally end up in your garden, it's another for plastic to leech out into your garden.  While you would not want to eat either, the former would probably break down before it reaches the fruit or veggies you eat, the latter- who knows.  

Besides, getting food safe barrels isn't exactly a challenge.  

Finally- Curtis' issues about freezing- that's why I'm now using a diverter from the total flow instead of directly filling the barrel.  So in the winter, you can just cap it off and be done with it.  And letting the bottom 6 or so inches of water freeze isn't a big deal, let alone more than enough weight to keep it upright in a bad storm.

Even with a good set up, these things are far from maintenance free.  But it's not really that hard, and you have free water.  I use mine to constantly keep my food gardens with water- and I don't have to worry about a failure causing a flood and wasting the water I pay for.  I have some very simple systems that keep water available all the time in small amounts.

SV reX said:

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

I think the places that restrict water catchment only limit it's use indoors. I've never heard of any restrictions for exterior use. 

Plenty of areas around me have outright banned water reclamation.  It was lobbied by the water utility and the spin they put on it was that it interrupts the natural course of water into the ground, but it probably just interrupts their cash flow.  In reality, it is a bunch of hard-right people who hate anything "woke" and somehow got it in their brains that water barrels were associated with growing marijuana and eating kale, so they had to go.  There is plenty of anti-environmental legislation here because it's associated with leftist ideals.

I'm not being political, I just followed the news stories about it because I was considering doing it at my current house.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That's how I see it, too. Especially since the water gets put back into the water system anyway. 

I'll point out my barrels are set up temporarily for the purpose of concept testing they have to be moved to allow the house to be painted this year also replacing the fascia and gutters is on the work required list.

For me the barrels are about runoff control and my personal bugaboo of dumping treated water on lawns and gardens. We chose our town partly on the water situation, many areas on Vancouver Island face amped up water restrictions as the summer progresses. Qualicum Beach's watering restriction is sprinklers can only be used 7pm to 7am daily no side of the street or day restrictions. We are on metered water and we never pay more than the minimum so the barrels are really quite moot on a financial basis.

In reply to alfadriver :

That makes sense. 

This thread's timing is perfect and I do apologize for hijacking it a bit, but this has been on my brain for a while now:

If I have a well on my property (like a hole in the ground that you can drop a bucket in to get water) does it make sense to also collect rain water?

Our water line in the well is about 2-meters down (I believe it's dug 10-meters down), and we have a small electric pump that we use to pump water out.  We use the well water to water plants and to wash vehicles.  That's about it.

BUT our house is completely demolished and our garden/driveway is completely tore up while we completely redo the whole shebang.  Mrs. Hungary and I were considering digging down and installing a cistern for the purposes of rainwater collection, and this would be the perfect time to do it.  But then that got me thinking...  doesn't the well do the same thing?  For free?

Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Some wells are better than others. It really depends on the quality and quantity of the well water. In our first house we had both because the well was not very deep, at least for around here, and it's supply was limited. And it's hard to beat the softness of rain water for things like showering and laundry.

In this place we also have a well, a deep, and very strong one, but the water quality is not great. It's high in minerals and red iron. So it has to be treated, which we do, but it's still not as nice as the rain water, so we also have a 10,000L cistern.

On top of that, I've added a 1000L tote to the downspout of the barn and use it as a collector/buffer for the cistern, which is fed by both the house and the barn. As the cistern level drops I empty the tote. And as it fills, I close the tote and collect water for later.

I also have a second 1000L tote on the front downspout of the barn I use for a pressure washer, washing bikes, cars and anything else we feel like washing. I never run out of good quality water.

In reply to Peabody :

Interesting!  I would expect the well water here to be full of minerals, but not red iron (all the water here is incredibly hard).  But your point about the superior water quality of rain compared to ground water makes sense.  And from what I've seen, the cistern systems aren't horribly expensive either.

Much thanks!