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water Collecting Rain Water

The laws usually used to prevent rain catching are old ones intended to prevent people from doing things like redirect creeks and streams which feed other property.  At one point in the wild wild west expansion of the beef industry, an unscrupulous person would buy land upstream of a rancher, stop the stream, and then use that to make money off the rancher.  Today, it has been taken to the other extreme of making money.  Now government sells water and waste removal and wants to force you to use their service.

In particular the desire to make you buy water for your garden or other use where they do not have to treat it later as waste because you are typically still charged for those services.  So forcing you to use their water on your garden is profitable.
 
I have a rain barrel I use as a 55 gallon reservoir I fill each morning with the hose and let the chlorine evaporate off.  I am not doing it anymore but when my plants were younger I would lower the pH of that water to 6.0 to try to mimic rain water.  Now that my plants are bigger I don't worry about adjusting the pH as much but I still can add any liquid fertilizer or even Epson salts before watering my plants.  My trick to get the water to my plants is I use a sump pump connected to a watering wand and water that way.  I need all 55 gallons each and every day so no way I could collect that much rain water.  When my plants are mature I just water with the hose.
 
I have a bunch of HD orange buckets that get the water off of my roof and a big blue 55 gal that I have a wide bushel bucket to catch the water and funnel it into the small hole on top. The 55 gal has spigots already placed in it and upper male attachments so I can take another hose and redirect the overflow into another bucket. I wish I had another one like it then I would set up an overflow drip down system into the second one. Future project :)
 
If I do have to use city water I usually let it sit 24 hours before I use it.
 
Angie
 
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