Emily Jacques

Wow, I can't believe people are reading this thread 3 yrs later! Thanks for all the replies. What we've ended up doing is convert a Tuff Shed into a tiny house. This past fall, DH put a gutter system around it and we bought 2 1550-gallon black water storage tanks from Tractor Supply, so all we have to do is let it rain. Because we are extremely conservative with our water use (easier to do when one doesn't have running water, which we have opted not to have), we need only about 270 gallons of water per month for household use. (We've been living on our property since Jan. 29 this yr.) We also collect water in the 2 50-gallon rainbarrels we had in the 'burbs, and this water I use, if necessary, to irrigate the garden. Greywater from dishwashing/laundry goes to the fruit trees.

So things are working for us; thanks again.
Emily

Thanks for the link! I think what we'll do for now is buy a 1K gallon or so tank, then after we build DH will probably be more confident in tackling DIY tank...we shall see...

R Scott wrote:Do the $/gallon calculations on the tanks. When I bought them for my house, the 1500 gallon tanks were the cheapest so I ended up with two 1500 gallon tanks for less than the cost of one 2500.

It looks like we'll have to get smaller tanks, anyway, b/c the gutters will be at 7 ft and I think the 2500 gallon tank is taller.

If anyone in the north TX/southern OK/western AR area is experienced in building ferrocement and will come out to help us build such a tank (in SE Oklahoma), feel free to PM me. (DH was overwhelmed at my suggestion that we try to build one ourselves...)

Michael Cox wrote:Presumably you are digging the earth from somewhere? can you set up some kind of catchment up hill? A pond and swale to help fill it?

A pond was our original great idea. Unfortunately, our property is pure sandstone three feet down. Would cost a ton of $$$ to put enough clay to make it work, and I will not use pond liners - if I don't want to drink water with the chemicals that leach out of it, why would I want to water the food I'm going to eat with it?

And since our soil is so rocky, we are going to have to import sand and mix cement with it to fill the bags...

Oops, forgot to update our house plans: we are building earthbag domes now.

Thanks to all for responding. This past weekend, based on the advice of a couple of people who live in the area, we visited a small community about 25 minutes away which is off-grid and talked to a lady there. They bought their tanks (which are HDPE) from Tractor Supply. Although I'm not thrilled about using any kind of plastic, even supposedly "safe" plastic, it looks like our best bet unless we one day break down and build our own ferro-cement cistern. The largest is 2500 gallons, and is a much more economical buy than any of the smaller sizes of rain catchment tanks/barrels that I can find on amazon.com.

Also, we are going to have a 10X12 Tuff Shed build in a couple of weeks, and from there we will start catching rainwater so we can have a supply by the end of the year. Thanks again!

We are going to be moving to our 5 acres in southeast Oklahoma next spring. First thing: right now the plan for our home is a concrete dome. I don't suppose there is any way to do any kind of rain catchment with such a creature; I am guessing we will have to have a large storage shed with gutters?

Second thing: where on earth does one find a large tank for rain catchment in that neck of the woods? (literally)

Third thing: I really, really want to use water from rain catchment, if not for household use, at least for garden irrigation (preferably both). Our property has a decent slope west to east. I'd like to dig some sort of ravine that empties into a pond/cistern - probably would get more water that way than a gutter system. But we have no idea how to build such a system - including how to line a pond. Does anyone know of any videos/books out there?

Someone is going to probably suggest swaling/taking Lawton's permaculture course. Thing is, we want it set up by the time we move in - DH will work in Dallas area until our house is built, and besides he is not big on DYI. Anything beyond gutters and a tank we would want someone else to set up for us.

Any suggestions to any of the above questions/ideas will be greatly appreciated.

We're going to build a pond for ducks/tilapia, set it up the permaculture way. That way we'll have extra eggs and meat. And I understand if you do it right, ducks can pretty much take care of themselves.

Which is why I almost want to forget about chickens, except I like the fact they 'll eat up parasites and the like.

I think the context of the quote was that if most of the acre was planted with forage that chickens like. And of course, they'll eat a lot of the bugs, too.

Found it! It's ten chickens. The exact quote I have down is, "Ten chickens can get all they need from one acre of land."