brooklyn1 wrote:
On Wed, 26 May 2010 15:13:01 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:

Ohioguy wrote:
I pay water and sewer fees on every single gallon of water I use
for my plants. I recently planted a hedge of blueberry plants, and
noticed that the house has 2 downspouts on that end, roughly 25 feet
apart.
I've never actually had rain barrels, though I did experiment
with 5 gallon buckets a few years back. (a neighbor complained that
he felt I was the source of mosquitoes in the area, and he may have
been right) I'm not sure that I would have enough room to use an
actual rain
barrel, since the plants are only a bit over 2' from the foundation,
and there is a chain link fence close to one end of the hedge.

I'd love to build an underground cistern that would hold 2,000
gallons of rainwater, but I think that is probably out of the
question as well, due solely to financial concerns.

Can anyone suggest a solution that might let me capture the
rainwater and use it for irrigation? Keep in mind that the row of
plants is about 25' long, the plants are between 2' and 2.5' from
the foundation, and there is a downspout at both ends of the hedge
row. I was kind of hoping I'd find solutions for this at some of
the big
stores near here, in the garden sections, but so far I haven't.

Years ago, I seem to remember seeing some sort of plastic/rubber
device you could fasten to your downspout. It would inflate with
water when it rained, and then slowly release the water over a
couple of days. You could simply unroll it, like a huge hose, and
put it
near the base of the plants you wanted watered. As long as the land
was relatively flat, it would work fine. I never bought one, but I
think something like that might work well. Just can't seem to think
of what it was called, and there is no guarantee they still make
anything like that, I guess.

Thanks!

Instead of capturing the water why not just distribute it better, eg
a plastic drain pipe from the downpipes along the row with holes in
it. It's cheap and doesn't make mosquito ponds.

It won't be so cheap when it can't dispel water quickly enough to
prevent water from backing up in the gutters, either the excessive
weight tearing them from the eaves and/or the water backing up into
the soffits destroying the house.

You are assuming that this arrangement will impede the flow of water more
than the open end of the pipe and that there is weight hanging off the
downpipes. There would be many cases where a suitable design can be found
which doesn't have these problems. Whether this is a good solution or not
depends on the details of the situation which we cannot see. I just wanted
to throw up the idea that if retaining water is a problem then there is the
option to not retain it.

David