How I save Water

OK..i have replyed to other posts about saving and storing water by bragging about the "land of 10,000 lakes" and how i had no need to keep any put away for some sort of survival situation..this is more home garden than survival but i thought i would post it anyway..

the city of Minneapolis gives a rebate on your water bill if you have a rain barrel or a rain garden..the garden is under the down spouts from the roof and the water go's into a grouping of plants that can sit in water untill the rain soaks in the soil..the city also helps pay for the plants..the barrel is in the back yard and during the dry spells is emptyed into out tomato patch..a couple goldfish in there keep the bugs and scum in check..



these three 15 gallon plastic barrels that i picked up for free--left by the roadside with a FREE sign--are used to store the rainwater for the houseplants during the winter..my wife has set aside about 20 one gallon milk and juice jugs and we keep those filled fron the big barrels.
i guess if for some odd reason we lost water i could use my camping filter to supply us drinking water in a pinch but i would expect that washing and cooking would be more like it..and having the water in the basement would save a trip to a local lake to fill them up..anyway..for what its worth,there you are..

Good stuff but do you know what the FREE barrels were previously used for? I would be concerned if they had been used to store some nasty chemicals and I don't think most water filters remove chemicals.

Steve

If it's not drinking water a good proper cleaning should make it useful.

i've had these for four years..they had soap in them and got a good rinse and sat with vinegar water in them for several days untill all traces of clorine smell were gone..the plants that get water from them do just fine..

I've got a couple of those, one outside under the downspout, and another in the basement for reserve and winter use. I have them for watering my bonsai and houseplants, which don't do well with our hard water.

If I'm not careful about making sure the water is settled before filling the one in the basement, it gets skanky. I found that I can fix that by putting a submersible aquarium pump in it. Now the one in my basement is sparkly clean.

What's sad is that in Brisbane last year, not only did you have to report to the government that you had that water, you had to pay a fee to keep it.

Think about that one...

ALL STOP!!!!--ya old pooh-bah..is this Brisbane as in OZ?Down Under..or someplace in Florida????--fee for keeping water?? do they have water cops??..bust down the door at 3AM looking for H2O??..

Well, just remember that it's illegal in places like Colorado.

What? to have extra water on hand?

Yep, rain barrels are illegal in Colorado. No, really.. Really pisses me off every time I get a $100 water bill.

Brisbane Australia mate, and yes, they have water cops, and if you are caught impounding water on your property without a permit, the water will be confiscated, you will be fined, and you will be put on a list to be physically checked on a regular basis. No busting down of doors in the wee hours, but they are effective at what they do nonetheless. They are just like the code enforcement officers hired by planning departments here that go around and look on people's properties to see if they have anything they shouldn't, like an shed in an easement, or a carport attached to the side of a house, etc.

You get charged for whatever water you collect just as if it came out of the tap. There was a joke going round that next we'd be getting charged for breathing air as well.

I wouldn't laugh too loud about that one, mate.

Searching the ohio laws and people discussing them I'm finding a grey area where collection water is not illegal but must be cleaned and processed and such. I'm wanting to set up some barrels to collect rain and run it through a soaker hose during dry days to water my plants. I'm now looking for some long flat ones I can slide under my deck to keep them out of site.

i just had a look at GroovyGreen and the rain barrel issue..so
water that falls from the sky is not yours---in Minneapolis the city wants you to keep that water out of the storm sewer system and back into the ground to help recharge the aquifer..i'll say one thing about ETS..i learn more than suvrival stuff here--

Do you have a link to the program?

The legal issue of the ownership of rain water in Colorado is probably linked to the problems of the Colorado river/Lake Mead system. That barrel of water is one less barrel of water used to supply the residents of Las Vegas down river for example. Lake Mead has about 10-20 years left at the current drought conditions before it runs dry and when it does run dry 10s millions folks will become environmental refugees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River

I don't know if rain in Colorado only comes in torrential downpours, but it seems that collecting water, especially from brief, light rains that would otherwise just evaporate would result in a net decrease in demand on the public water supply.

The problem is who controls that water, you or the government. If you collect it without a fee or accountability, then you exclude the government from being able to say what can be done with that water. Water is a natural resource, freshwater is a limited resource, and that means it all must be governed and regulated, regardless of the source or abundance. That's why owning a house on a lot does not automatically grant you permission to do with that land whatever you want. Someone else most likely owns the mineral rights to that land.

There's freedom, then there's the illusion of freedom. Guess which one we really have?

and now you know...the rest of the story.

Ben-who grows weary of trying to make sense of it all.

You can't cache rainwater in Colorado because of Nevada? That stinks.

I wonder if Coloradoaaaaaans (or the proper term) could slap a www.ready.gov sticker on the barrel and call it disaster prep? Ready Colorado suggests storing water for emergencies though they only mention 2 quarts per person per day rather than 1 gallon per person per day that some other states and the federal government suggests. It baffles me that taking it from the sky to store is not acceptable where pulling it from the tap is just fine.

It's got to have something to do with revenue from water bills too, but seriously.

Laws like this make me want to figure out a workaround, even though I don't even live in Colorado.

The government can and does charge you for the water you get from them to water plants or your yard. They also estimate your swage bill based on the water you allow to flow through your water meter. Why pay a sewage charge for water you spray on plants? Why pay for city water to water plants when rain water will do the same thing?


It’s simple, collect your rain water in a way that conceals it from inquisitive eyes and don’t tell your neighbors or anyone on the net you are doing it. then water your plants as needed.


When you collect it and use it to water the yard or plants, you are in fact putting it right where it would naturally go, just not at the same time as it falls from the sky.

Yeah, he's probably right. Local municipalities across the US are already fighting over water rights and availability. "Water war" isn't too far fetched an idea as most of the world does not have easy access to potable water.

Lots of information on the history and current water supply problems of the Colorado river supply system are avialable here at;

http://www.livingrivers.org/pdfs/lasvegassunfeature2008.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00...merican_Plenty/



The long term future for the water supply from the Colorado river system seems to be pretty bleak with demand outstripping what the water supply from the eastern side of the rocky mountains can supply. The alternatives appear not to be sustainable either. You may of heard of peak oil but in this part of the world peak water may get you first. You can live without oil because there are alternatives, but you can't live without water.

If you deliberately try to collect rainwater through clandestine means, and you get caught, it is then elevated to fraud (due to intention). That would then equate to a prison sentence if you get caught.

Not worth it.

Thinking about storing it underground? Better hope your local water enforcement agency doesn't hire a helicopter with a flir system, which can identify underground water sources by their infrared footprint while flying overhead. Maybe you can dig a hole deep enough that the thermal variance will get masked. Of course there's the building code inspectors that might notice the constructive efforts on your property and want to find out what's going on. Have you filed a permit app for that underground tank on your property? Is there a new outbuilding that just popped up that isn't in last year's overhead picture? Or maybe they'll just look for typical usage indicators. Are you planning on watering your lawn with that water when your neighbors yard is brown? Will the sewer camera see a greater outfall from your service connection than the rest of the neighborhhod?

Having the water is not so important as being able to use it when needed. Unfortunately, such uses are easy to detect, if you know where to look, and they are getting very good at recognizing these things.

Are you talking about the Ogallala Aquifer? Do note that the farmers have pretty much switched out to a new kind of pivot that is much more efficient than the ones that were probably mentioned on the history channel, but even before it was better than gravity irrigation.
Your corporate farms have to have something to water their thousands of acres and this is currently the best solution (that I know of), unless you want to move to dry land crops (and if you think grain prices were high before...!)

Actually, most of our cropland now is not irrigated, IIRC. Then again, a lot of it is now in CRP. We're paying an awful lot of people not to farm dryland grain these days. I doubt the price would go up much if they were told the CRP subsidy was going away.

Hmm, I can say that is not true in this area fer shure.

That could be the case. I don't know the regional breakdown of land usage so much, but it ain't all crop circles from coast to coast just yet.

Just you wait.

If grain prices do go up, I would hope to see more farmland actually being farmed and producing something other than natural grass. I think overall we only farm about 5% of the total arable land in the world anyways.

At the risk of sliding off into politics, I have to say that the free money that goes to farmers is here to stay. At any rate, I really just meant to add a footnote about how the pivots are more efficient these days than when they first arrived - part of the whole saving water topic : p

People who like to water their garden should check out a book (actually 2 volumes, soon to be 2) called Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. He lives in AZ, so he knows what 'dry land' means.

Out of many clever ideas, one is digging a hole for a tree or shrub twice as wide as you would normally make it. Fill one half of the hole with stacked junk mail, magazines and old newspapers, plant the tree in the other side, soak all with water, then cover both with soil to the appropriate level. He said he has a friend who does this (in AZ), and he has checked back three months later and the trees were doing very well, and the junk mail was still moist. In summer.

More ideas, too.

I doubt that communities care so much about the rainwater as they do about the tax they want to collect on it. The next time you go to Las Vegas, check out all the water features they have there. And most of them were created AFTER the new water laws were put in place. All you have to do is pay the right people under the right table, I guess.

Cynical Sue

Like I said, it has nothing to do with conservation, everything to do with control.