When it pours, let barrels be your water bank
When rain falls and we watch much of it flow into gutters and out to sea, the conversation increasingly turns to capturing that valuable runoff. Homeowners can take a fairly simple step to recover a remarkable amount of water from their roofs: Install rain barrels at downspouts.
“What people don’t understand, because we don’t have the ethic of capture where it falls, [is that] rainwater is very capturable,” says Andy Lipkis, founder of L.A. nonprofit TreePeople. Lipkis, who has spent 22 years advocating for rainwater collection, notes that from a 1,000-squarefoot roof, “you can harvest a whopping 600 gallons of water every time it rains an inch.”
“Catchment,” capturing that water, may be the key term of the fall and winter. The rainwater you capture now can be used to water your garden later, effectively removing the need to use home irrigation systems.
Installing a rain barrel is a relatively inexpensive, DIY project that involves shortening downspouts and adding an elbow to feed water from the roof gutters into secured plastic barrels that typically hold 50 gallons. Outfitted with hose bibs and spigots, a valve-regulated overflow conduit, and topped with fine-mesh mosquito screen, the barrels are built to safely retain and deliver garden water where it is needed.
It’s no surprise that water agencies see rain barrels as an important component of drought response. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, through the Metropolitan Water District’s SoCal Water Smart program, is currently offering a $100 rebate per barrel for up to four barrels. Suppliers can be found online, and the websites of many water districts, as well as TreePeople, feature step-by-step instructions on rain barrel installation and maintenance.
For Lipkis, however, barrels are just the beginning — “the starter drug,” he says with a laugh. “We want to see people installing cisterns.”
Cisterns are the large water storage units that can hold, depending on size, thousands of gallons of water. Though the prospect of a big, round tank in the yard may be off-putting, there is a new generation of so-called “slimline” tanks developed by Australian companies such as Bushman Tanks during that country’s epic 12-year-old drought and now for sale here.
With depths ranging from 1 to 2 feet, a height from 4 feet to nearly 7 feet, and width from 4 feet to over 7 feet, the tanks link together to form a fence line at the property perimeter. As water filters in from connected downspouts, the tanks fill one by one, until the whole line reaches capacity.
Rain barrels are typically priced from $70 to $300. The cost of cisterns varies depending on material used and capacity. A well-made 205-gallon polyethylene cistern costs about $325, but prices run up into the thousands for single tanks holding 5,000 gallons and more. Slimline cisterns are pricier, ranging from $475 for 265 gallons to $760 for 530 gallons.
For more information on rain barrels and rain barrel rebates, see www.treepeople.org or www .socalwatersmart.com.