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.

1000 gallons US is about 4000l. Say you have a modest vege garden, 20
square metres (22sq yards) which would provide quite a lot for a family,
such a tank will allow you put on 25mm (an inch) once a week for 8 weeks
which keeps your veges growing. Or you could water say 5 fruit trees for 16
weeks and keep them alive until it rains. In my original post where 1000
gallons was mentioned I actually said 1000 plus and suggested a ground tank
(dam) might be better. Clearly the sums are different for each garden but
this doesn't mean you can generalise and say it is fruitless or that it
cannot be done.


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.

Perfectly serious. Not every house in the world has mains water. I don't.
You jumped at the "no hose bib" part and didn't notice the "connected to
mains supply" part. This was not intended to trap you at all but does
illustrate your thinking is a little narrow.


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.


I am not talking about gardening in a desert but a place with erratic or
seasonal rainfall where a water tank or dam may be a great help. In a
desert I would give up on veges and fruit trees (as well as lawn) unless I
had a source of water not rainfall dependent.

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

I am using "what if" to try to get you to think about situations that you
haven't thought about. To suggest what I am describing is unreal or
irrelevant only shows you are making unwarranted assumptions. You should
stop being so parochial and not assume that the whole world is like your
back yard. This is an international forum.

David