Amazing statement, that the system is near free. Here is what I see at my site: 1) house has a footprint of about 1300 sqft, but two of the six gutters are devoted to ostrich fern, a high water perennial. So is half the detached garage (to hardy kiwi), which has no gutters anyway. I have 1000 sqft to conserve into 2200 sqft of garden. None of this water runs off, it all percolates into the ground and supports trees and the water table. 2) Need to replace gutter covers, because they stop leaves, but let in elm seeds. It is also a Cape Cod, with nooks and crannies in the roof where stuff congregates, decays and washes off. Things are much better now, since the ash trees died (also purveyors of small seeds), and I cut five spruce. No way to filter all that junk while tons of water are washing into the barrels. That will be quite a penny. Just to give you an idea, where my driveway empties into the lawn, I have to shovel elm seeds with a snow shovel in season. 3) The facility (18 barrels) weighs a lot more than the garage, probably half the house. It needs its own concrete foundation, and good retainment. I am guessing it needs 150 ft of 4X4 and 300 ft of 2X4, plus bolts, etc. I cannot build it near the house or the city will get me. In the back of the garage, I need a nice 5 inches pipe (at least, it has to collect all the rain of 1000 ft during a rainstorm) running 60 ft through the lawn, at a slope of 1 inch per foot, with some nice posts in the middle of the lawn which I will bless every time I have to mow. The barrels may be free (I never found them, and I have two, each of which I paid $10), but I still have to take delivery, or make nine car trips (plus all the trips for the wood). That is no money? My barrels come from 27 miles out. 4) The braising of the plastic barrels. I have no tools, and no one I know has them. They cost, and probably a couple of barrels will be lost. Now, to get into the 21 beds, I need 1500 ft of PVC, and probably 100 connectors and 100 elbows. If the system is to be done right, the end caps must be removable at the end of the season to flush the lines. I need valves in many places, because in August the tomatoes need zero water, and the celery, 2 inches a week. 5) we are left with the simple matter of drilling holes. Perhaps as few as 2000 (but in beds with carrots or lettuce, you need many more), but because they are drilled, their overall area exceeds the area of the PVC, unlike, say, in drip irrigation. That means the system loses pressure quickly, and the far beds get a lot less water. And all this to save water that is insufficient, irregular in its supply, and ecologically clean but technically dirty. It has the appeal of being in liquid form, but there is a lot more of it being lost to evaporation (and mulch really is free). It is water I would never put in my drip system, and a drip system, also, is something that truly saves water, and can be put in in a couple of days of work, and it saves water whether it rains or not.

I have question regarding all of this. Today, my father and I cleaned 20 years worth of built-up sediment runoff from my house gutters. The roof is asphalt shingle, from 1996 and I don't believe the gutters have ever been cleaned until today. We had buckets of tarry black sludge, water and rocks that had unlodged from the shingles. When I wasn't looking, my dad decided to empty a few buckets worth of the liquid portion to reduce the weight. He didn't strain the liquid, he just poured off the top, so it was black nasty tar-water. And guess where he dumped it? In his septuagenarian wisdom he dumped that black water into my veggie garden because it wouldn't be as visible, since the soil was also dark. I am pretty upset about it and felt he basically turned the center of my garden into a contaminated brownfield site. I stopped him from pouring the final bucket in there once I noticed what he was doing, but already several had gone in. I appreciate that he wants to help out, but I never wanted him here to do this job; he imposed on me, sort of telling me it needed to be done. Now I'm thinking about dismantling the garden, raking it out and seeding with grass and giving up entirely on the idea. I don't want to eat from it anymore. I'm also upset that I had just planted some things in there not too long ago. The smell was foul from the sludge and I had to wash my hands 5 times with various soaps and pummus to get the odour out. Surely the tar-sediment which built up from sitting for 20 years in gutters is carcinogenic and awful for anyone to ingest. Are my fears reasonable? Will that stuff wash away by summer, or will it be absorbed by the plants and maybe give me a tumour some 15 years down the road? I'll always look back to this episode if that does happen and I kept eating from that garden...

So I did a search and found an interesting study on collected rain water quality. Here's the link (hope it works here): http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Effect-of-Roof-Material-on-Water-Quality-for-Rainwater-Harvesting-Systems.pdf In short, metal roofs seem the best in terms of low contamination, but none are really that bad as far as irrigation water is concerned. There are some studies which point to asphalt shingles as being good in terms of PAH (organic hydrocarbon) contamination. But there are conflicting conclusions on that. http://www.thecenterforrainwaterharvesting.org/2_roof_gutters3.htm What I would like to see studied is contamination levels on more modern roofing materials, such as the factory baked on painted metal roofs (standard fair for metal barns and roofs today). And some studies in an area with neutral rain water (the Texas study had fairly acidic rain). I have heard that the factory painted metal roof material was tested as the cleanest of the current roof materials, but I have not seen the tests that bear that out. In general though, it seems that using collected water to water a garden or orchard is likely safe, as long as you are not in an area of high pollution, and you don't have an unusual roof (like lead coated copper). If you have zinc surfaces that the water travels over (roof, gutters, etc) then high zinc levels might be a concern over the long run. Or if your roof/gutters have solder joints (lead) then that may be a concern. The more acidic your rain water is, the more concern about picking up heavy metals. Anyway, that's my take. You can find quite a bit of stuff to read on this topic with a quick internet search, so do your own research. Disclaimer, I am not a doctor nor a chemist and do not play either of them on TV.

Well, probably not actually bio unfriendly. After all, its the same water you take a shower or bath in (and cook with too). But the rusty crud does probably settle out and its a good idea to attempt to clear that stuff out every once in a while. Guess I will have to go out and do it Right Now. Oops. More info. I guess I forgot how my newer heater valve worked. It is opened with a screw driver. The nut shape is not a handle but the faucet cap, just like on an old sink faucet. If you took a wrench and opened that with water pressure on, you would create one of those destroy your house, epic flood, movies. And, its been so long, I had forgotten that people suggest draining the tank by truly draining it rather than just flushing stuff thru it. You are supposed to close off the water inlet above the tank AND turn off the heater so you don't burn up an empty tank; and THEN open the drain. Well, actually after also opening one or all hot water faucets so air can replace the draining water in the tank just like I suggested for emergency water. And, I guess I had some goop or a clog of some thing that clogged up the drain after a minute. I had an air compressor that I blasted into the drain hose. That temporarily pushed the clog away and water gushed out for a couple minutes until it clogged up again; presumably with the same junk. I did the air blast again and got a long running flow until empty. Obviously most people don't have an air compressor and air hose. Blasting (or gentle) water from another outside garden hose would also work, but you are then putting two same garden hoses together and the metal to metal won't seal well. I actually used an odd rubber washer to act as a gasket between my metal pieces. You could do the same with some rubber item (or scrap leather/vinyl from old purse etc.) with a hole in the middle. Guess its a good thing I did it now. Hope the wife doesn't want to take a shower for a few hours.