Conserving Water with a Rainwater Cistern Tank and Gravity Watering System

Reader Contribution by Mary Lou Shaw
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Water conservation seems increasingly important to my husband and me as we watch large Ohio farmers use water from aquifers to irrigate their fields. Instead of depleting aquifers, we’ve chosen to both conserve water and to water our garden during dry periods. To accomplish this, we put in a rainwater cistern tank last autumn. The project continued this spring by installing two elevated watering tanks for our garden’s gravity watering system.

This project began by hiring a friend with a back-hoe to dig a premeasured hole in the chicken yard, adjacent to the garden. A 2,500 gallon cement cistern was then purchased from a local septic tank company who delivered and installed it in two parts—bottom and top. This cost a total of $1552. A heavy plastic tank could also have been used.

In addition to the standard opening on top, it has an opening high on one side where water enters the cistern. Opposite this entrance is a hole where water exits when it nears the top of the cistern. This surplus water travels through a porous tile so water can be furnished to dry soil as it makes its way under the garden, through the pasture and into the creek in the lower meadow.

The rainwater cistern tank was filled with rain water by

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