How To Collect Rainwater For Home Use

Learn everything you need to know about how to collect rainwater for home use. Residential rainwater collection systems are one way to ensure you're in charge of your water source.

By Adapted From Environmental Building News
Updated on February 24, 2023
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by AdobeStock/Zstock

Learn everything you need to know about how to collect rainwater for home use. Residential rainwater collection systems are one way to ensure you’re in charge of your water source.

Rainwater harvesting systems can be as simple as directing gutters to a lidded garbage can or as complex as a concrete cistern, roof washer and filtration system. But whatever your application, rest assured that you’ll be getting some of the purest — and cheapest — water around.

Why Save Rainwater?

Rainwater can be used for potable water [drinking, cooking, bathing] or nonpotable uses such as landscape irrigation, livestock watering and washing. Collecting and using rainwater has numerous benefits, ranging from improved water quality to reduced stress on underground aquifers.

“All water is rainwater,” rainwater systems enthusiast and author Richard Heinichen is fond of saying. And indeed, he’s right: All our water, whether sucked from an aquifer, river or well, or harvested from a rooftop, once was cloud-borne.

But after it falls from the sky, rainwater percolates through the earth and rocks, where it picks up minerals and salts. As Heinichen points out, in many cases, this water also collects other contaminants such as industrial chemicals, pesticides and fecal coliform bacteria found in the soil. Captured before it hits the ground, rainwater is free of many pollutants that plague surface and underground water supplies and, according to the Texas Water Development Board, “almost always exceeds [the quality] of ground or surface water.”

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