Does anyone know the best way to collect rain water if your house does not have gutters?  I have been looking on line and most of the web sites say to hook up a barrel to the gutters on your house.  My house does not have rain gutters. 

Frugal2

You can probably collect runoff from the roof by setting a container where you can see the greatest runoff is. You wouldn't get as much, but it would probably be worth it. If you use the widest container you can come up with, that would help. I've collected some by putting shallow bowls out in the middle of the yard. 

 

Thanks Pat!

Frugal2

 You're welcome and good luck with it. I'm still contemplating buying a regular rain barrel or two for the backyard.

 

Hey Frugal2 I use 5-gallon buckets that we get Hydraulic fluid in for our tractors/dozer, and I catch the water from off our two storage buildings. I just do as Pat said, put them where you see the most run off and if you are using it for something special, I use mine for my soap making, they I always strain it before putting it in the jugs that I keep it in. I wouldn't use it for anything that I was eating, since it was in the hydraulic fluid bucket, who knows what hydraulic fluid would do to your ennerds? LOL

we have several rain barrels on the property we have alot of the them we use the water for the garden and other things around the place .

 

                                                                   

Thanks wvtrailseeker.  This is encouraging.  I guess I will have to pay attention next time it rains so I can see where the run off is.  Because the price of food keeps skyrocketing, I decided to grow a vegetable garden this year.   Then I started to think about watering the garden and how to collect rain water, since the price of water doubled in our town this year.  One thing led to another!

Frugal2

 We've been collecting our rain water in large plastic 55 gallon drums that have the tops completely cut off. They came that way from somewhere, we don't know their origins, but they work so much better than the plastic garbage cans we tried to use. Now when one is filled, we move the gutter spout over to the second one. Most of our rains would fill several of these, but alas we only have two. Once filled we cover them as best we can with plastic sheeting. When it's time to use the rain water for our garden, we just dip our 5 gallon painting buckets in from the top and carry it over to the plants. This is sooo much easier than our old spigots that we put on the bottoms of our plastic garbage cans. I wish I knew where these plastic 55 gallon drums came from so I could tell you where to look. Our neighbor had several sitting in her yard she never used, so we offered her $ 5.00 for them. They seem very industrial by looking at them, and the insides were very clean and did not have any chemical smell.

I like to catch rainwater too, and collect for my indoor and outdoor plants.  We have gutters tho, so my buckets are placed under the rain spouts.  I also use 5 gallon buckets.  Then I fill milk jugs to keep a supply.