My Farm is in a drought area, with a limited aquifer. I would love to use above ground water tanks to save my arena runoff. Who has done this? Details? Do’s and don’ts?
I have 16 horses to water, along with an arena to water. Little barrels aren’t gonna cut it. I’m thinking more of those large black above ground tank systems. I could line 3 or five of them up and get them filled during the winter. Each one being potentially thousand gallons.
Only small scale for me.
I do that on one of my sheds for water for my garden. It keeps two 50 gallon containers filled.
Gutters to redirect water to whatever containment system you want. I keep mine elevated and use gravity to push water to my intended purpose.
Depending on the size of the arena you might need to have a massive holding tank or have multiple of them.
Sure, that is called use of rain barrels or cisterns. It’s a great capture of water from impervious surfaces that are otherwise damaging local hydrology. When I was growing up, all our water came from our roof & was captured in a cistern.
Don’t make it visible to drivers/walkers by.
There was a law passed, iirc, that all waters belonged to the government and you can’t divert streams, build underground storage of rain water etc.
It appears it was modified to become a state issue.
Here is a map of the states where it’s legal /illegal
There was a thread about it when it was first passed.
My state’s guide to rainwater harvesting says that it’s theoretically possible to get .62 gallons of water per square foot of roof for each inch of rain, but that there is wastage, and probably should expect more like 75 to 90% of this to be available for capture.
I’m wanting to set something like this up. I’m currently drowning in water from record rainfall, yet forecasters are predicting a hot and dry summer.
I figure I could just use it for watering the plants or even the pool…
We seriously considered it when we put a standing seam metal roof on our home. Between that and our barn, we could collect a good bit, even in a drought year. But the storage tanks do get pricey.
Considering how awful last summer was here, we may have to re-evaluate this as a future project.
Fortunately, I am in Oregon. Rainwater harvesting is encouraged!
I do this on a small scale (a small roofline of an outbuilding) and a larger scale (entire roof of a barn). The small roof can fill a couple hundred gallons in a day of rain. I collect it in barrels and those big restaurant-grade water cubes. I use this water for soaking grain and small washing projects.
The bigger roof collects into giant cisterns (thousands of gallons, I can’t remember exactly). If I use it carefully, it provides 100% of my 3-horse drinking water for the entire dry season. The barn roof is probably a third or a quarter of the size of a typical covered arena.
The startup is a big expense but in a dry zone the feeling of knowing you have all that water saved up is almost as good as a barn full of hay.
time to introduce the State laws on capturing rainwater as the laws vary greatly from state to state
Don’t quote me on it, but I think that Arcadia Farm (H/J, Yorktown Heights NY) harvests the rainwater from the roof of their indoor. Last I heard, they were happy with it.
My sister who lives in France has been doing that for years. She has a huge holding tank in her basement and several big cisterns to catch rain water from her house’s roof.
She uses it to water her horses when the streams going through her pastures run dry ( which never used to happen, she lives in the mountains and never thought she would see drought there ). She also waters her garden with it.
I didn’t know there were regulations in the US for catching rainwater on your property!! That is wild. Is it just to make sure people don’t try to drink it?!
According to this article, there are actually very few states where capturing rainwater is restricted as long as you are not planning to use it for indoor/potable water purposes. There are some exceptions, including a few states that have restrictions about the amount of water you are allowed to capture.
It’s encouraged in my area, and there are a number of businesses that provide installation services for rainwater harvesting. It’s not uncommon to see water storage tanks in semi-rural and rural areas around here.
We’re on a well that supplies water from a spring-fed aquifer, are conservation-minded and try to not waste any. Capturing the rainwater that would otherwise run off, and perhaps go to the aquifer – or perhaps not, if it runs off to an area not over the re-charge zone – thereby cutting down on the amount we would otherwise draw from the aquifer doesn’t seem like a bad thing.
There’s a few Youtubers you can search for with info on setting up large rainwater collection tanks to supply all the water they need annually. People setting up their properties for going off-grid. Not sure any of them have horses, but same principles apply.
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