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Harvest Water Using Rain Barrels

For the past year, the BACTrust Conservation@Home program has been helping homeowners in our community initiate environmentally friendly practices into their own landscape practices.  Although most people are more concerned about learning which native plants will add color to their landscapes, the Conservation@Home teams have relentlessly been encouraging homeowners to begin harvesting rainwater.

There are many advantages to harvesting water on your own property. Harvested water doesn’t remove potable water from the aquifers like traditional water systems do. The collected water is saved and used later during periods of decreased rainfall to protect plants during drought periods. And it can be used to water plants during village watering restrictions. Since the water is not lost downstream during heavy rainfalls, it eventually adds to the recharge of local aquifers. Less energy is used to pump water.

The rainwater collected is soft water—it doesn’t have the minerals or additives that are found in well water or in treated community well water. This makes it not only healthier for plants, but also healthier for the soil and all its microorganisms. A word of caution, though—some contaminates such as dust, soot, animal droppings, and roof composites may be present in the collected water, which makes it unsuitable for drinking and possibly unsafe to be used on vegetables.

This past summer, northeastern Illinois gardeners were fortunate as there was abundant rainfall in August to keep the trees and plants adequately watered without having to do much additional watering. Even the lawns didn’t brown out like they normally due in August. But much of the rain that fell was carried away, and evidence of that can be seen along streams and waterways.  Just imagine if you had been able to harvest that water and use it for other purposes.

So how do you harvest rainwater? There are many ways, but the easiest is by installing rain barrels at the end of downspouts to catch the water that falls off the roof of a house, garage, or garden shed.  It’s actually surprising how much water can be collected in this way.  For a catchment area of 1,000 square feet, it is estimated that during a one-inch rainfall, anywhere from 500 to 600 gallons of water can be captured.  So, if a house is 60’ x 60’, it has a catchment area of 3,600 square feet or 3.6 times the 1,000-square-foot model.  That means it will capture up to 1,800 to 2,160 gallons of water. That’s enough water for 40 to 50 showers—just in one rainfall.

There are many types of rain barrels on the market. Some are constructed from recycled plastic olive barrels. Although the majority of barrels are green or black, it is possible to find some in other colors. There are even some designer barrels that can be very expensive. Most barrels hold 40 to 50 gallons of water and come with hose connectors, water spouts, overflow devices, and screens to prevent mosquito growth. The barrels are easy to install, but there are local distributors that will install the barrels for the “not-so-handy” homeowner.

Using rain barrels is a great way to preserve water for re-use on your own property. Granted, a rain barrel that harvests 50 gallons of water each rain storm isn’t going to do a lot to protect our water supply. But if every one of the 10,800 households in the Barrington area had just one barrel, imagine how much healthier our aquifers would be.