Health & Fitness
Your Yearly Water Budget
Some details about water yields and utility cost from local rainwater harvesting expert Albert Barlow.
We love Santee, having just moved here at the beginning of the year. Our neighbors are really great; we love the hills and the feel of our community.
What we don't like are our utility bills.
We do rent, so there are limitations on what we can do to our home, but this isn't just about making you aware of my product, it is trying to get people to change the way they think about water, as ultimately we are creating a crisis for the next generation.
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The point is simple; your roof yields all the water you need, from rain, for a yard with plants selected for this environment. Your yard can be beautiful, natural and thriving with nothing more than the water that comes from your roof.
What we have been conditioned to do is plant non-native and water abusive landscapes, like grass. The local authorities and utility companies love a well-manicured lawn and downspouts that pipe from your home to the curb where they collect cigarette butts, trash and oil and speed along to the ocean. They hope you aren't paying attention to the drying aquifers and declining production of food in California as crisis creates profits and dependency.
Find out what's happening in Santeewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The math is quite overwhelming; a thirty foot wide road one mile long yields over 85,000 gallons of rainwater per inch of rain. That water is directed into concrete culverts and to the ocean where after a rain we are told to avoid it because of all the pollution that is swept along with it.
A small home of 1,000 square feet yields 6,240 gallons of rainwater annually per ten inches of rain (http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USCA1030 ). According to published data the average for Santee is 12.41 inches per year. So, the key is to design your yard based on that number of around seven thousand gallons of water per year and use the rainwater from your roof as the primary source of that irrigation water.
An ideal rainwater harvest system is between one and two thousand gallons of capacity. Large tanks DO NOT need to be placed next to the house but can be gravity fed at the edge of your property.
If you had a two thousand gallon system full at the end of the rainy season in March you would have over eleven gallons PER DAY of rain water to feed your vegetables and landscaping FOR SIX MONTHS of summer dry period.
Think about it and know where to turn for free consultations and estimates. I have 27 years’ experience in rainwater catchment and I am a local Santee small business.
