Has anyone ever rigged/built a system for distributing rain water from their gutters to beds or areas where it'd be more useful in your yard? Ideally I'd like to have something set up to distribute water to some flower beds that don't typically get much coverage from normal rainfall. Seems a waste to have water dumped in the area immediately around my downspouts. For that matter, even having it water my foundation more effectively would be great.

My initial, not very well thought through ideas are that I could:

A) Collect the water in containers and use it where needed. Simplest idea I suppose and it would also allow me to better manage how much water is applied to my beds. One issue that might be a problem is this might create breeding grounds for mosquitos unless I could come up with a means of keeping the containers sealed.

B) Use PCV pipe run to wherever I need the water to be distributed. Issues of clogging, aesthitics, preventing mosquitos from breeding in the pipes and managing the amount of water to various areas are a concern with this idea.

Hrmmm..

Surely someone's tried something like this already. Any thoughts?

~Dave

Great way to save water. Use a cistern or cistern like device. many ways to do it. Simple to hard. Use old plastic barrels, let the water flow directly into it, screen the gutters may be desired or create a screening device to screen the leaves and twigs out before it drains into your storage container. Try this link for info. http://www.plastmo.com/rbdivert.html and http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt9707.html Or if you are really serious, live on some land try this. http://www.dancingrabbit.org/building/cistern.html Good luck, when you do it post a picture.

Hey, thanks!! Lots of stuff to investigate.

~Dave

And, when you are ready to paint your soffits, rip out the gutters and put up these!
http://www.rainhandler.com/

_________________
...Bill

That Rainhandler system seems pretty nifty. Not sure from the images on their web site how they look up close. They'd work great for my front landscaping beds.

Still looking at ideas to make my own collection system, but if I did buy a pre-built set up I came across these rain barrels that I think look well made.

Aaron's Rain Barrels



~Dave

I have a friend who has them on his house in Lake Highlands... they look great. And you don't have the leaf clogging and potential rotting soffit behind the gutter with them either.

_________________
...Bill

I am in the process of doing the same thing. I purchased 55 gallon plastic barrels from a guy off of hwy 380 just east of McKinney. They are food grade barrels so I know what has been in them before. I have painted them my color of choice other than blue with the new "plastic paint" (can be purchased at any home center). I used 2" PVC pipe, from my gutter and run into the top hole of barrel. The barrel has a 2" threaded hole which you can reduce and use a 3/4" valve to even hook up a hose and control water flow.

Now it just has to rain. Good luck!!!