Why collect rainwater? If rural water is not terribly expensive, why do we collect our rainwater on the ranch? It’s part of the ranch’s ecological vision coupled with our need for livestock water. Streams and lakes are not present on our property. The soil clay structure is not conducive to holding water. Tanks (what ponds are called in TX) are susceptible to evaporation and erosion.
At the ranch we collect as much water as we can from our structures (home and barn) into our 9,000-gallon tank farm. The 3,200 sq. ft.(home) and 3,300 sq. ft. (barn) will collect approximately 3,600 gallons during a 1-inch rain.
As a general guideline, a one-inch rain will collect 600 gallons from a 1,000 square foot roof.
Our buildings are fitted with 6” gutters and filtered downspouts. The downspouts feed into the 4” underground water delivery pipe (green pipe) to the tank farm. The elevation drop from home to tank farm is about 25 ft: this creates considerable head pressure to fill the reservoir tanks. The elevation drop from barn to tank farm is about 10 ft: this creates sufficient head pressure to fill the tanks.
On the next post, I will cover the maintenance requirements and the measures we take to ensure clean water for our livestock. I hope it rains tonight.
Enjoy the recent photos. The cows have added an item to their 2020 Christmas list.
The 30 inch legs make reading the slope much easier 
June carefully goes through the fire pit to re-enjoy our lunch left overs from paper plates 
Fury and I had a Tremendous work out today – lots of round pen work) 
In the ditch-completing connections 
New item for the cows Christmas list
Cool blog! Here are a few useful water harvesting links as well:
https://rainwaterharvesting.tamu.edu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-e6oOyrQ04
Keep up the great water conservation WF Ranch!