A few months ago, my wife saw that the city and water district were offering rebates on rain barrels. The rebates were significant enough to pay the entire cost of the barrels, so I decided to purchase 2 of them at Home Depot. Installig the barrels was easy as all I had to do was make Some slight modifications to my downspouts, attach an overflow hose and replace the spigot with a brass one as the cheap plastic one that came with the barrel would break easily.
After a major rain, I was able to fill up and then empty the 2 50 gallon barrels. We had another rain that filled up the barrels, so now I have another 100 gallons of water to use.
This got me thinking about how little having these 2 barrels will do to conserve water. First off, here in San Diego, we typically get rain in a concentrated window which wouldn’t really allow me to collect and empty water more than a few times a year. If I had barrels that collected 600 gallons, I could probably water all our plants for the entire growing season. Second, if I can fill up 400 gallons of water a year (best case scenario), I would save about $2 based on the cost of water.
While the rain barrels look nice and let me collect a little water, they are not cost effective (if I had to pay for them) and really won’t put a dent in my water usage. I can just feel a little bit better knowing that I’m trying to help.
That makes perfect sense with city water in San Diego. We live in rural Connecticut and have a well. If we lose power we lose our well and so, our water. A rain barrel system might be nice around here.
That said, keeping leaves sifted out might be an issue.