This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

How Much Rain Comes Off My Roof In Santee?

Harvesting and storing rainwater is something every homeowner can do to improve their environment, and most aren't aware of how much water their roof can yield.

Read more about

As of September 2011 the average annual rainfall in Santee is 12.2 inches per year. The amount of water that will come off your roof may be a surprise.

Find out what's happening in Santeewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Santee is a semi-desert climate. We don't really get all four seasons, weather-wise. Our fall, winter, and spring weather, are fairly the same. Our summer go from great warm weather to an unbearably hot desert. The hottest months are August and September, where temperatures are often in the '90's to 100's. Just over the hill, in San Diego the temperatures are usually 10 degrees cooler in the summer and 10 degrees warmer in the cooler months.

For the sake of being conservative let's say the rainfall is less; 10 inches per year in Santee. If you had one thousand square feet of roof  collected a conservative rainwater yield would be 6,240 gallons.

Find out what's happening in Santeewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

If a home had a 1,000 gallon cistern or a series of smaller barrels connected together and they entered summer with full tanks they would have 11 gallons per day for three months to water their gardens.

Another thing people don't think enough about is what happens in an emergency when the , like it did a few years ago in the fires. No electricity means the to our homes in Santee aren't working, and we lose water pressure. Imagine how it would be in a if your home was , as the government suggests it could be.

Imagine the peace of mind that would come from having hundreds of gallons of rainwater stored and a simple filter to make the water drinkable?

Rainfall data for Santee: www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/santee

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?