Water Collection

Categories: Garden

I have a plan for recapturing rainwater for watering the garden (I have a small patch of grass, potted plants and some planted borders). Thought I’d run it by you to see if anyone has done something similar…

Plan is to put a 54 gallon barrel on the fire escape. Attach a diverter to the downspout to the tank and collect rainwater. When the tank is full, water will be returned to the downspout through an overflow hose.

Water from the tank will be hosed into the garden. I don’t think there will be enough water pressure to spray or sprinkle, so I’ll probably have to use watering cans or a drip hose.

The collection area is a flat roof, slightly sloped and there is only one downspout. Roof area is around 640 square feet. My calculations indicate that 1/4 of rain fall will produce almost 1200 gallons of water on the roof!

NYC gets about 3-4 inches of precipitation per month.

A full 54 gallons of water weighs about 450 pounds. I would expect that the fire escape would bear this but am not sure.

Was looking at the water barrels found here:

http://www.sprucecreekrainsaver.com/

Sound feasible? Sensible?

By phripley | 05/01/2009 10:48 AM