Our Simple Rain Water Catchment System | Construction and DIY projects | Forums

Here is how we built our rainwater catchment system. When we built the house in 2009 we had a local guy come in and do our rough in for our plumbing for us. He asked me where I wanted to put the outside water spigot, he couldn't understand why I didn't want one. I had plans to build a catchment system off the roof, it's why we went with the metal roof in the first place. Besides with the pond as well we had all the outside water we would ever need.

The spring after our first year in the house we decided to get the system installed, we really made a push with the gardens that year and the extra water would be welcome. We have a local guy who sells the 275 gallon totes so we went and picked up 2 of them

man he looks so young and skinny, he wasn't really impressed by my performance

We played around with different layouts, we were thinking of putting one on each side of the house

man the yard looks empty

We finally decided on putting the totes side by side and piping them together, we threw a level on them to see where we were at

and excavated out the yard a bit to level them some

We threaded on pvc fittings and a quick disconnect so if we want to move them and drain them, quick note here some totes have different threading on their valves, we had to return one and swap it out because it was reverse threaded. You would think they are all the same, but they are not.

I ran a 4 inch pipe from my downspout into the one tank

and out system was complete

after a couple days of rain

I installed a hose reel and I was ready for watering the garden!

couple of thoughts, the totes need to be protected from uv or else they will start to yellow and turn brittle. My thought was to build a cedar and enclosure and make it look like a cedar planting bench. It is still on my to do list

also albinorhino asked how I keep mine clean, I just drain them in the fall and after their initial top off in the spring, I have heard of people putting bleach in them to keep the algae bloom down but we haven't had to do it at this time.

I hooked mine up the other day, time to fill them up

one last note if you are going with totes, double check what they were filled with. The man we bought ours from said they were all food grade but one of them had a chemical smell and had a white scum on top of the water. We had filled and drained it several times but could still not get rid of it. So we ended up taking it back and swapping it with a different one. Peace