Top 7 Mistakes to Avoid when Harvesting Rain Water

welcome back my friends at the prepper project calm recently asked me if I could write an article on the top 7 mistakes you make when harvesting rainwater I thought well that's a good one I've probably made every mistake in harvesting rainwater and we are in the middle of monsoon season right now here in the tropics and it has been raining and raining and raining but in just a few months it's going to be dry water is the number one thing that you need for your homestead and for your gardens it's great to have a stockpile of gold and guns and seeds and MREs and old baseball tickets and socks and bubble gum and margining containers and broken pans but if you don't have water you're gonna be in trouble so let's look at the top 7 mistakes when you're harvesting rainwater number 1 make it expensive that mosquito did not come from my water harvesting system a lot of people look at what it takes to harvest rainwater and they look at big complicated systems they see that they need a cistern and they need filtration and maybe pipes underground and they need a pump and they need all this crazy stuff and they look at it and say you know that's too expensive I'm not gonna deal with that well I don't have that kind of money anyways but I did want water and most of my water is going to irrigating Gardens so what I did was I got myself some old hot tubs and I set them up in the backyard three of them and a couple of rain barrels and then I had probably something like 1200 gallons of water caught and I never ran out of water even when we had a month-long drought there was enough water there that I could take care of the gardens and keep them going it doesn't have to be too expensive it's better to harvest some and do it on the cheap than it is to harvest none mistake number two let the mosquitoes in mosquitoes are a serious problem even an old tire can bring mosquitos so if you have a big barrel open of water it looks like a mosquito breeding Haven you don't want that you don't want big problems of mosquitoes especially with all of the mosquito-borne viruses that are wandering around right now and it's irritating at barbecues with my hot tub pond systems I put in what are called mosquito fish that's a little native Florida fish that eats mosquito larvae I also put in goldfish which are supposed to eat mosquito larvae and that kept him down didn't really have much of a problem with mosquitoes but in the barrels where I didn't have as much space they were a problem unless I covered them with some screening this is for tropics we have lots of mosquitoes here and it's not from my rainwater harvesting if you don't cover them up you're going to have problems with mosquitoes mosquitoes like to breed and open water if you cover them up they die you can also pour a little slick of oil on top but that tends to junk up over time and coagulate into sticky messy stuff and it's better to just keep it covered with screening real well or put lids on all over your catchment one other thing there are these mosquito dunks that I've used I'll put a link in the description they are very helpful for killing mosquitoes if the mosquitoes have already gotten in I had the screening pressed in on one of my rain barrels and mosquitoes got into it and laid and next thing I knew there were all these little larvae in there but I didn't want to dump all the water and start over again because it wasn't really a rainy time and I wanted to keep that water so I put in some of this mosquito dunks stuff and it just you knocked him out and it's a natural bacterial way of killing them that he's not toxic for your plants or anything else so that works but it's better to just keep them covered to begin with if you can help it mistake number three choke the flow this was a problem with the first rain barrels I built I put spigots on them that I got from the hardware store and they look like nice brass spigots well after my first rain when I cranked those things open they only had a trickle of water it took probably like a gallon a minute it was terrible so you put a five-gallon bucket underneath the spigot and you turn it on and you're just sitting there watching it fill up for the next five minutes that was ridiculous I should have just checked and gotten bigger ones I'll never make that mistake again a friend of mine has a great big PVC valve on the side of one of his above-ground tanks and it just shoots the water out of there that's what you want if it's too much of a pain to get the water out you're not gonna want to use the rain barrel you're just sitting there watching the water trickle out of it you are going to get bored and you're gonna go turn the hose on so don't choke the flow another tip don't go too small I said I had rain barrels those were the first things I set up rain barrels with little choked off spigots well I was just watching the rain pouring out of the gutter and I thought I gotta catch some of this so I made myself some rain barrels I got some barrels that I reclaimed gotten for like 12 bucks apiece from a water treatment center they said they didn't have anything toxic in them before so I put spigots on him I put screening over the top I put him underneath the rain gutters and then captured water well what I found was after about five minutes of heavy rain they were overflowing from the tops just exploding over and that means there were hundreds of gallons that I was not capturing and you know what a couple of 55-gallon drums that's better than nothing but that's not a lot of water so go big get yourself a big sister and get yourself an old hot tub build a pond something like that don't just count on little tiny rain barrels I mean that's nice if you live in a condo or something like that but bigger is better especially if you're trying to survival garden to get an idea of how much you can harvest off a roof the University of Arizona reports a one inch rain will collect 600 gallons from a 1,000 square foot roof well a 4,500 square foot lot will receive 2,800 gallons that's a lot of water 600 gallons from a thousand square foot roof catch it use it store it up for later because sometimes you don't know when it's gonna rain again don't miss the power of swales swales or indentations cut into the ground that catch water these are swells on our homestead amidst the coco orchard this slows down water going down as slow the water comes down it hits the swells which are running on contour and it catches in there and then it's soaks into the ground slowly rather than just running all the way down to the river or off into the road or wherever else and then evaporating you're actually setting the water in place to go down deeper into the soil and actually soak in by slowing it down you're giving it time to get into the ground and swales have been used by permaculture gardeners such as Geoff Lawton and Paul Wheaton to capture a huge amount of water and turn ground that is so so into ground that is moist and rich it also traps a little bit of organic matter coming down all of the leaves and everything flow down with it this isn't a way you capture it for drinking but this is a way you capture it for your orchard or your gardens or whatever else you can plant around a swale if you have a little bit of slope use some swales and hang on to that rainwater rainwater harvesting mistake number six muck it up with algae algae are tiny plants that means they photosynthesize so there's a real easy way to keep algae out and it doesn't require algaecide all you have to do is cut off the light got a rain barrel that's white and some is coming through you know some Sun lights coming through and it's turning a green inside painted black just paint it black when they can't photosynthesize you'll starve your algae problem goes away now if you have ponds and they've got algae in them that's not that big a deal you know some fish will help deal with that and if you are using that water to feed your Gardens algae is great it doesn't matter it'll just rot into the ground a lack like compost when you pour it on but for sending through filtration and trying to get clean water for your house I'll just kind of a pain in the neck so it's better to just darken it out and keep it from being a problem to begin with mistake number seven the very biggest mistake is don't harvest rainwater at all if you don't harvest rainwater you're missing an abundant resource coming from above and it's great water rainwater compared to chlorinated water it's so much better for your garden they've done Studies on it showing the productivity increase that happens when they just use rainwater on a garden it's good this is the way God intended it water from the sky grab it while you have it and you won't be worried if things get bad you have a hurricane we've got some water the problem a strike in the city or some terrible terrorist attack or something like that you've still got some water you get yourself a berkey water filter or make your own filter or whatever else you've got drinking water you've got a irrigation water the biggest mistake is just to not harvest it at all so don't be afraid to be cheap you can put a trash can underneath the gutter if you really want to start harvesting water right away and then you've got a week's worth of water for your gardens so there are my seven top mistakes and how to avoid them thanks for watching be sure to LIKE and subscribe catch me on the web at the survival gardener calm and be sure to check out the prepper project com where I've been writing articles for years they're great fulk and they've got some good ideas over there until next time may your thumbs always be green you [Music] if you wanted to harvest some rainwater give you things that you might have forgotten so let me break it down now with my top seven mistake so all y'all can take it to 11 1 don't make it crazy expensive drop of dollars and a hot tub some barrels or iPod you find solace to keep out a second feet of lime juice or lay their eggs on rafts and attack shoulders knees and toes you gotta beat those bros watch for mosquitos 3 put some proto chock the flow keep the wide open and you let it go for your big shiny won't cut it when the rain falls all y'all is gonna wanna big so give a fig about size and just stay alive old mr. swales capture water run it down he'll take the red pill and collect precipitation for evaporation cleans it broken through the trees please number 6 don't muck it up without like a slicker Green that stuff is mean plugging up your text with single self banks and pulled it to the side step plants don't dance to their tune listen as I shout just black them out number 7 the biggest mistake you can make not to take advantage of the god-given water you gotta catch its own stress keep it simple and you'll reach the harvester these guys and stay alive and thrive no matter what comes your way okay yeah yeah you better remember cuz I'm gonna remember that I told you to do this and if I come over to your house and the see that you have it I'm gonna steal your Christmas presents its role in the lake I'll make sure everyone breaks baby y'all I'll paint some mean things on your sidewalk but make it plausibly deniable yeah peace put a trash can under your gutter word to your mother

Channel: David The Good

Views: 1,796,518

Keywords: harvesting rainwater, harvesting rain water, rainwater, water barrel, cistern, harvesting water, rain water, get rid of algae, mosquitoes in pond, mosquitoes in rain barrel, get rid of mosquitoes, hot tub pond

Id: zxcthuHEXUY

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2016