In article ,
"brooklyn1" wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
brooklyn1 wrote:

And I don't know why anyone would need more than 100 gallon tank to
collect rain water for watering some plants around ones abode, and
that's more of a head trip than a real money saver.

Some people have gardens rather than a few plants.

Anyone who lives
where they can keep say a 1000 gallon tank filled with rain water
doesn't really need to be collecting rain water if it rains that
much.

Not true, you haven't thought this through. There are places where annual
rainfall is quite high but very seasonal or very erratic. You need to
save when it rains to water when it doesn't.

That's true of most any area, no one can accurately predict weather. But no
matter how much it rains in any one period if it hasn't rained in awhile adn
likely won't rain anytime soon then you couldn't collect water at the rate
it needs to used for any but container gardening. Watering the ground where
it rains sporadically will literally be fruitless.

Not if you are running greenhouses and would have to have a retention
pond, if you did not store the water. Many malls now have retention
ponds and use the water from it to water the grounds of the mall. The
rain runs off the parking lots and into the pond - there is pump in the
pond to move the water into a separate watering system to water the
grounds.


This entire concept of collecting rain water in huge tanks
where it hardly rains is really pretty silly... the point of
diminishing returns is reached at about 100 gallons, probably more
like a 55 gallon drum... begins to cost more to transfer and haul
than to turn on the hose bib.

What if there is no hose bib connected to mains supply?

Now I know you're not serious.

I am sure in the area you live and work in you are absolutely correct -
this is silly, and that you may even have been in enough other areas to
have built a general rule for why you think this is silly however...

In some areas there are now code requirements that prohibit a hose bib
from being installed on new construction. I just reviewed the new code
for one community in Australia, it was in that code. I have looked at
codes for Morocco and for other cities and seen similar restrictions.
The drier the area, the more likely the restriction is either in place
or being considered. Even Los Angeles and Los Vegas have considered this
in their building codes. So far they have not put it in - but if water
stays tight - they may be forced to if only to control swimming pool top
ups and yard watering.

There are parts of the world, where cisterns for rain water are very
common - in many cases a single home might have 1000 or more gallons -
it is not so much for watering as for living - I have been to houses in
Arizona with cisterns and tanks connected to the whole roof area - to
capture as much rain water as possible.


No one is going to maintain a lawn in say Las Vegas with
collected rain water no matter a 5,000 gallon tank, a lawn will drink
up water in the desert faster than it rains.

Watering lawns will indeed require huge investment in a desert, I for one
would not attempt to grow a lawn in a desert.

Nor should one attempt to grow a garden in a dessert, not unless they have a
constant piped in water source... like the Colorado River.

With all your theoretical "what-ifs" you ought not to be gardening period.

I have a good friend in Vegas who runs a hobby green house (mostly a
shade house, there is little need for glass most of the year) and he and
his wife has an extensive rain collection system - every time it rains
an inch - they put about 2500 gallons in their tanks - this is not only
roof run off, but run off from the road behind and above their
house...surprising how much water can be collected off a hard surface.

The rules in the US and Canada - even in Europe are not the rules the
world over - I have done work in more than 40 countries and am
constantly surprised by things that I would take for granted at home,
that I can not elsewhere - I am a pretty good traveler and read the
travel customs, but I have learned they only scratch the surface of the
things you need to know to work on conservation and energy efficiency in
most countries.