Water Accounts

We had 2.3" of rain between January and July 2013. But, now that July is here, the rain season has started, which means that it is Spring!

We received about 2.5″ of rain in the last 48 hours, and it’s still raining. The rainwater cisterns are filling up! We caught 4,000 gallons during this period, which is enough to keep our garden watered for an entire year.

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Catchment Area
Here’s our roof potential:
House Roof + tank roofs – 1,000 gallons of water per inch of rain.
Barn + barn tank – 500 gallons of water per inch of rain.
Sheds and assorted tanks – 150 gallons per inch of rain.
TOTAL – 1650 gallons per inch of rain

Capacity
For capacity, we have the following:
House cisterns – 14,500 gallons + new tank (7,000 gallons, under construction)
Barn Tank – 7,000 gallons
Shed tanks – 1,500 gallons
Swimming pool – 2,000 gallons
TOTAL – 32,000 gallons

So, we need about 20 inches of rain to fill everything, if they start empty.

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BUT, we already have the following, either from last year or from the rain already received this year:
House Tanks – 6,000 gallons
Swimming pool – 1,000 gallons
Barn tank – 1,500 gallons
Shed tanks – 1,000 gallons
TOTAL – 9,500 gallons

So, our current capacity is 32,000 minus the 9,500 gallons we already have leaves 22,500 gallons, which translates to about 14 inches of rain.

We typically receive about 30 inches per year, and we’ve had 7.6 inches so far for this year (5 of that is this month). We can reasonably expect 20 inches of rain between now and the end of October.

We have never before had this kind of water, and we are super excited about what it will do for our place.