In the old days, my family used rain water for cooking an drinking. Since we
were living in a tropical area, we had frequent rain storms. We divert all the
rain water away from the holding tank during the 1st 30 mins of heavy rain. We
didn't want to drink craps.

Here in SoCal, with the tar emulsion roof on our house, it's not safe to use
rain water for anything.

Benign Vanilla wrote:

My first phase plan is to create a system to water the herb garden, and then
a second to water the vegetable garden. I have put together a spreadsheet to
calculate potential gathering capability, and can see this being a great
source of water. I've even found some pages for people that use it for their
house water. I don't want to go that far, but if these numbers are right,
it'd be a great source of water for the garden and the pond.