Water Harvesting

While researching the prospects of drilling a water well on our place here in East Texas we discovered some things that are of a concern. One is that the price of having a well drilled is now astronomical and most of the companies we spoke with aren’t drilling in this area any more.

The second thing is that there is apparently some new legislation on how water can be taken from the Texas aquifer or something to that effect. I haven’t researched it completely but in brief it states that all water wells, old and new, must be registered and located by GPS. Some time in the near future all water wells must be metered and the state will begin charging for water taken out of the ground. If this is true it may mean hard times for us small timers.

This brings us to the subject of low-tech water harvesting suitable for the rural homestead or farm. I have found numerous sites on the web that tout expensive and complicated systems but none that seriously address the low-tech end of it. Like a simple water barrel for instance.

I have a few ideas but would like to hear from others who may be working on this problem also.

Here is OR they are trying to do the same on new wells, now if already have and it goes belly up no meter. In towns they can no longer drill for wells. In the country we still can. I want to have another one drilled just for the business but like you it is sky high...

I am buying a couple of big rain collectors to help.

D

I’m afraid that water is going to be a very expensive commodity before long.

I have priced some tanks and found them to be quite expensive. Also any tanks would have to be underground to prevent city hunters from poking holes in them.

We tried to go with a pond but the only clay found was too sandy to hold water and the sandy loam soil that we have won’t support the weight of the water if we had it lined with clay or rubber. I am thinking about building some sort of low holding tanks from planks and rubber that can be filled with runoff from the house and barn. Unfortunately I’m not an engineer so I may not know what I’m talking about either. Not even sure if rainwater is even safe to drink these days.

lizard, there have been several rainwater harvesting threads on the Sustainable Alternatives forum. Perhaps you can find useful information among these threads.
Rainwater can be filtered and purified for drinking, just as well water usually needs to be filtered/purified.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/695908/

The Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting is available free here:
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/iwt/Rainwater.asp

http://www.rainwatercollection.com/

Thanks GM. I will check them out and see if I can learn anything.
LK

I am glad I own my mineral and water rights on my land...my grandparents bought this place along w mineral and water rights...My grandpa was a water well driller and he drilled the pipes 750 feet deep to get this good tasting water....

In Arizona you have to have your well registered, and some of my neighbors didn't send in the final papers so they think the state doesn't know they have wells! Ha ha, the state knows exactly who has wells, how deep, how many gpm, etc. because the well drillers are required to submit this info before they can drill. And the depths are 600 to 900 feet here, no way can you just go out and do it yourself. So far, no water meters. A cousin of mine in Colorado has an old house that was built over the first pioneer's well, up in the mountains. He says a guy from the state came out and said he was going to put a meter on the well and charge my cousin for the water he used. My cousin said he would not let him in. The Colorado guy said, "no problem, we will blow up your well". My cousin said "but my house is above the well" and the CO guy said "that is not OUR problem." My cousin then let him in to put the meter on. Recently I have read that a company in CO that planned to help homeowners put up rain gutters and cisterns to catch & use rainwater was ordered to cease & desist, because the state of CO owns every drop of water that exists in, on, or under Colorado! And with all that precip they get, too! If anyone has info different from this, please let me know, otherwise I will not plan to move to Colorado. Well, I wasn't planning to anyway. Just hope AZ doesn't get any ideas. 8^(

Moodene, you are the luckiest person alive!

I heard that Colorado just changed their laws and now there is two laws that state those with wells can get collect rainwater. All new construction in New Mexico is required to use rainwater. It is a patchwork of weird laws out here. I love my rainwater system. never been out of water. We had 13" of rain last year and we still had water.

The Feds are trying to force through, right now, a federal law (SB 787 clean water act) that states that all water, streams, rivers containers that hold water, will be under Federal jurisdiction, but we will have to pay the taxes on the land. Any activity that effects that water will be under federal jurisdiction. So this is a huge intrusive land grab. More than a land grab, a livelyhood and intrusive homelife intrusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd6LRFepDlY
I live off of rain water for all of my needs. I am very concerned about this. Some states are wary about the Feds overstepping their bounds and will say that this is a state concern.. Texas will not step into the fray. They will love this because the fed will just hand the administration of these water rights over to private corporations like they are already doing here in Texas. Huge pipelines of water are already draining our wetlands on the coast and shipping it inland. The lower colorado River Association is trying to establish that Rainwater collectors are Stealing the water from THEIR surface water even though it has been proven that 93% of rain does not make it into streams. SHEESH. I asked one LCRA lawyer what was his definition of surface water. He said "water that has come in contact with the ground. "I said. "my Water never touches the ground". The water battles are ongoing and world wide with the world Bank and IMF helping the corporate factions to centralize its control under the multinationals.. The revolution in Bolivia that got Morales elected was because the sitting president had been held over the barrel and forced to give all the water in the clouds, all the village wells, and infrastructure in the cities, ALL WATER to the Bectel corporation. People took to the streets and ousted the president and ran Bectel corporation out of the country . Bolivia is considered a bad socialist country because they stopped the theft of their life blood by our countries corporation. Those same corporations are out for our life blood..

We don’t have a shortage yet, but I can see it coming down the road. That’s why I’m trying to educate myself on rainwater harvesting now. We need it more for irrigation than for drinking so it doesn’t have to be the best.

Give these politicians a few more years and we can all experience what it’s like to live in a third world country.

I've looked into storage solutions and though none are cheap, there's a couple that might help you out...
water bladders and self-built ferro-cement cisterns (under ground) and tanks. The concrete for the ferro-cement tanks would run you, but if you did the labor it would be less expensive than those plastic numbers. They are essentially structural wire inside several layers of applied concrete.
I also have a neighbor who has a large cistern made out of stuccoed cinder block, I think.

We're running into trouble with natural gas exploration in the neighboring county... I've been told that it takes 8 gallons of water for every gallon of nat. gas extracted. And the fracking (fracturing and injection of the bedrock) compounds are proprietary, meaning the companies don't have to disclose what's in them, so we have no way of knowing what kind of hazardous compounds may crop up in our well water down the road...

If it is like here (we have the same thing going on in this and surrounding counties of east TX) you won't have to worry about what will be in the water. Here it is WHAT WATER? Wells are running dry. Not a good sign and natural gas prices are low so we wonder why the push to drill!

I think I’m going to construct some low open ponds that are connected. The property runs a little down hill so the idea is to build them in steps down the hill. When the first one fills up, the overflow will dump into the next one and so on down the line. If I make them 10’x10’ with a 2’ plank wall above the ground and dig out the centers to a depth of around 4’ I shouldn’t have any problems with the weight of the water pushing on the sides or deforming the ground underneath too much. The rubber pond liner material should have enough give. Also several small tanks should be easier to deal with than one very large one.

If I remember my figures, a 10x10x3 foot tank will hold just under 2500 gallons, so several of these in series should give me something to work with. With this type of construction the cost should be low compared to others.

Since we won’t, I hope, have to drink this water I could multi-task the operation by raising fish in them. Other people have bounced this idea around and it sounds plausible.

Your thoughts ….

What is your average rainfall? I have toyed with the idea of having large tarps ready to unroll and spread out when it rains, to funnel a larger area of water into drums or tubs. That might work around your ponds. But in the area I live we just don't get enough rain or snow to do more that water for a week or so. And months apart. But the fish idea is good, if you can maintain the water.
Good luck,
Julia

I have heard about getting water in texas:

Its easier to get it form 10 feet up than it is 10,000 feet down. Look into water catchment systems, Australian homes are very good source for info on this topic.

As for ponds... a lot of evaporation loss there. Is there a way to minimize that?

Covered cistern?

lizards_keep is going to build ponds, that's why I was asking. I was thinking of those insulated bubble-type pool & spa covers, but I don't know if you could raise fish under them.

I don't know how often it rains where they are, but around here, a 10 x 10 x 3 pond might just dry up between rains if nothing was done to reduce evaporation.

Average rain fall here is about 60 inches I think. We don’t have a water problem yet but I can see it coming.

The problem is evening out the rain through out the month. Here It either won’t start or it won’ stop. Might get one-month average rain the first two days of the month and not get the next months average until the end of that month.

Every thing in the nursery is in 3 to 7 gallon pots and needs to be watered at least every 3 days during the summer. This is the purpose of the ponds … to collect and store enough water to last between the rains. Besides that, rainwater is much better for the plants than city water.

The water shed will be from a 40 x 60 foot barn and a house so I should, will have to dig out my figures again, have enough to fill the tanks. I don’t know how to figure the evaporation but don’t think it will be excessive.

The fish aren’t a must; I got the idea from Azgrammi (?) and thought it might be something else to think about.

Maybe you could use one for fish, and keep the others covered?
Just to see how fast water goes in your area, set out a full pan of water and see how many days it takes to go away... wider than deeper, like your ponds.

You get rain every month? Nice... I think our average is officially 18"/year here. But we're in a drought, so it's lower in reality.

I see you made passing marks in mind reading. Since my OH wants a water feature I was just thinking that I would build a trial pond by the patio and fill it with run off from the house. Deck it out as a frog pond with plants and stock it with food fish instead of faux coy. If the house sheds enough water, build another pond downstream and cover it with a wooden top if evaporation proves to be a problem.

If the pond idea works out I would then move to the barn and add enough more to supply water for the nursery. Sounds good anyway.

Yeah, sounds like a plan for sure. Wonder if water hyacinth would make a more attractive evap cover than bubble wrap... =0)

By coy do you mean koi? The big Japanese goldfish?

OH? Update my data files, please. =0) Your Other Husband? Whoa.... no wonder you wouldn't want flirtatious fish.

I've started back to work on my rain harvesting system. I've got an 1100 gal. tank, but it's not hooked up yet. I'm planning on using the overflow to water trees, but I've had a devil of a time deciding where I want the trees! LOL I think I've got it sorted out now, and I'll try and post pictures as I go.

Today I managed to get the end cap of the gutter properly pop-riveted on with a flexible sealant in the groove. One giant step for Jay, one truly miniscule step for humankind! LOL

Ah … yea , I meant koi not coy. Sometimes I don’t smell so good (grin).

I must have also committed an abbreviation error . By OH I meant Other Half. The wife would be somewhat distraught if she thought I had another husband somewhere.

Please fill me in on the current abbreviations in use so I don’t really goof on something

OMG! ROTFLMBO!!!

But think how much work you could get done with another man about the place!

Besides OH, there's
SU... spousal unit
SO... significant other
DW... darling wife, dear wife, or dumb wife... depending on the day.

Others?

And just how long DO lizards keep, anyway?

Ok, I figured out the OMG. Not sure if I want to know what the rest of it is.

I have a couple of other projects to finish up before I start on the test pond. Will post some pictures of the before, during and after once I get started.

18 inches of rain isn’t much to work with. Surly you can’t rely on just rainfall to bring any kind of a crop in. Here we have more trouble with the heat than lack of moisture. I don’t even try to grow anything in the summer any more. Just spring and fall. This spring we started having Aug. type weather in June. My tomatoes were coming on nice and strong and setting fruit like crazy till the heat set in and they all went dormant. We got a few large ones but most of them stopped at tennis ball size or less and just sat there and burnt up on the vine. Water didn’t help.

I had the gardens positioned so that they got afternoon shade but the last two hurricanes have rearranged the shade patterns so much I will have to reposition them I guess. We lost several huge oaks and just about all of the hickories got topped by 10 feet or more.

What kind of trees are you planting? My DW has been bugging me to plant some more fruit trees here.

Oh, before I forget … would that be dead or alive?

Rolling On The Floor Laughing My B[ackside] Off

Dead or alive? I don't know... are they pickled? =0)

I'm thinking of plums and cherries, which seem to do OK up here (7100')... apples frequently seem to get hit by late frost, and besides everybody's got 'em.

Here, it's not the heat, it's the cool... I can get great big tomatoes, but there aren't enough warm nights (over 50*) to ripen a lot of varieties. We've found a couple of reliable OP varieties, and I'm experimenting with a couple more this year... though naturally I got them in late, so don't know how reliable this year's test will be. But one of the new one's is starting to turn orange, and last week we had several nights in the 40's (oh for pete's sake!).

Have you considered making a hoop house over your garden and instead of covering it with greenhouse plastic, cover it with shade cloth? I'm planning on doing one for my next garden expansion, not so much for the sun as the hail.

Mostly around here it's hay, so most years in our foothill valleys there's enough for a cutting or two. A few people have ditch irrigation, but we don't have that on my side of the valley. For gardens we pump well water... mine is so high in calcium, my drip system doesn't last but a couple of years before clogging. And talk about crusting the dirt! I'm slowly but surely getting things figured out...

I just did the calculations again this morning, and from my 42' x 28' roof, figuring on a foot of heavenly sent water per year [conservative], I can collect around 8700 gal. of water. That oughta be a help.... I've got an 1100 gal. storage tank, and I'll feel like I can use the water. =0)

You’re a little farther up the hill than I realized. Not much below tree line? Summer time around here the nighttime temps run in the upper 70’s to low 80’s. Daytime it normally runs around 95 to 98. This summer has been brutal, little rain with temps in the 104 to 106 range and 110 or higher heat index. The fall garden usually goes in around the middle of Sept but might have to delay it a bit this year if it doesn’t cool off soon.

We use 60% shade cloth in the nursery but still have to run fans to circulate the hot air. The garden was doing very well with afternoon shade from the trees and there is nothing to trap the heat that way. Will just have to adjust its position some to get it back in the shade pattern.

Will the plums be able to break dormancy under those conditions?

I can’t wait to see if my little pond project is going to work of not. I know the trees will like the rain water better than what we are using now.

I haven’t known a lizard to drink but the live ones keep about 3 years if they can stay away from the cats.

Lizards do drink. My cats brought one in the house last fall and turned it loose. It was a chamelion. He stayed in here for several weeks before I caught him and put him out. When I misted the houseplants he'd come out of hiding and lap the water off the leaves just like a cat. He got very thin because of the food shortage. I imagine they get most of their water needs from juicy flies and spiders normally.

Was referring to drinking alcohol. You have to read the last three or four posts starting with the one where Jay asked me “How long do lizards keep”. He was making a funny.

I was thinking of a hoop house with no ends or sides... just a canopy for the garden. Plenty of air circulation that way... I'd only use 30% shade cloth for up here, but you're a leeeetle toastier, aren't you {{gasp, gasp}} I wish they made shade cloth in some other color besides black... that makes it hotter than H### under them. Once I sat under an awning made from light tan cloth and the temp difference was major! Of course, that's special designer stuff, not priced for real people to use.

Oh, plums do fine up here. Our postmistress has some little purple plums, I think they are old Damson or something, that have gone native and make the best stewed plums... yum yum. They've formed quite a thicket at the bottom of her parking lot where they get run off if there's much rain at all.

I've about got my collection system up... naturally there is ONE thing I forgot at the hardware store yesterday, so I've got to go back into town to get it before I can finish... plumber's tape! Dang. I'll post a pic when I've finally got it all screwed up... er, I mean put up. LOL

Shade cloth do come in white.

Source?
Would they have the tan, too?

I haven’t seen any tan. We tried some of the white and it does seem to run a little cooler under it. One problem I have found is that after a while it starts to turn a blackish color. Sorta like mildew or something. Really looks yucky after a while.

I get most of the shade cloth from BWI.
https://bwicatalog.bwicompanies.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10001

You might have better luck in finding something closer if you goggle it.

Jayryunen, this may help.

I buy mine from International Greenhouse Supply (igcusa.com). I also bought my greenhouse from them (5 years ago).

Shade cloth link (more than a dozen colors): http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/Colored-Shade-Cloth/products/1179/

I bought 50% aluminet: http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/Aluminet-Shade-Cloth/products/1180/

Their SuperStore main page for other supplies: http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/

I've ordered from them several times and would recommend them. Their thermal ac film is worth the extra price, no drip and works as advertized: http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/Thermal-AC-Greenhouse-Film/productinfo/GF-6AC/

Claud

Saltmarsh.... great site! The tan only comes in 70% shade, so won't work for me here, but the 22% white looks perfect! And very reasonably priced, too. The lowest shade I'd been able to find up to now was 30%... I'm just wanting a hail barrier more than anything. We can get hail at any time during the summer.

The wind here is also getting to be year 'round, and with our dry air it just sucks the life and vigor out of plants, a constant stresser. Seems like a hoop house made out of the 22% white fabric wouldn't need venting and would still offer considerable protection from the drying wind and flattening hail.

Lizards... bwi seems more geared towards professionals, couldn't even find shade cloth on the retail side. Thanks anyway. =0)

Was afraid of that. It’s cheaper buying it in 100' rolls.

OMG Saltmarsh, thanks for that link! A greenhouse is in my new homestead plans and that place is quite reasonable and by the reviwer's comments, seems to provide excellent customer service as well. Thank you again.

Hineni, I'll send you the article about the portahoopies... temporary, movable tunnels using basic materials. They'd work great in a large garden rotation system.... Like Coleman suggests with the GH moving back and forth over beds as the seasons dictate. Only instead of dragging the whole thing on rails, these are made to easily break down and be moved.

=o)

Finally got my rainwater collection system all hooked up, and just in time... we got a bit of rain today!

I've only hooked up one side of the house; we're thinking of doing a second tank at the other end of the house and would hook up the other side to it. We're going to see how it works out with just the one side per tank... if it stays well-filled, then we'll do a second tank. If it draws down too quickly, we'll just do one tank.

The down pipe on the corner of the house collects the first flush of the gutter. It's got a loosely fitted screw cap on the end that drips, so it slowly, slowly empties itself onto my mint bed around the base of the old rain barrels. Once or twice a year I can unscrew that cap and get the roof gravel out. I've also got a piece of window screen over the entry hole of the tank to keep out mosquitos. Glued in place with some silicon caulking.

I haven't finished the overflow on this yet... we've a ways to go before the water level reaches that. The overflow is going to water a tree or some raspberry bushes... haven't decided yet.

Thanks Jay, looking forward to the link. And HEY, nice collection system. I think that needs to go to the Brag Board!