Rural Gardening: Water Harvesting, 1 by lizards_keep

lizards_keep wrote:
While researching the prospects of drilling a water well on our place here in East Texas we discovered some things that are of a concern. One is that the price of having a well drilled is now astronomical and most of the companies we spoke with aren’t drilling in this area any more.

The second thing is that there is apparently some new legislation on how water can be taken from the Texas aquifer or something to that effect. I haven’t researched it completely but in brief it states that all water wells, old and new, must be registered and located by GPS. Some time in the near future all water wells must be metered and the state will begin charging for water taken out of the ground. If this is true it may mean hard times for us small timers.

This brings us to the subject of low-tech water harvesting suitable for the rural homestead or farm. I have found numerous sites on the web that tout expensive and complicated systems but none that seriously address the low-tech end of it. Like a simple water barrel for instance.

I have a few ideas but would like to hear from others who may be working on this problem also.