Lessons I've Learned From My Rain Barrel
Ah, Seattle in November... it's right up there with Paris in the spring. And this November: what a month! As of the 15th we've broken our record for the rainiest November on record, with 11.64 inches so far.
Speaking of rain and our far-distant spring... this past spring, I succumbed to a fit of eco-grooviness and bought a rain barrel. After all, what could be better than capturing my roof's rainwater and keeping my plants happy in the summer?
I got a bargain on a 60-gallon orange job from a Seattle Public Utilities program. It was originally used to ship peppers or olives from Greece and you can still see Cyrillic characters on the side.
I like my rain barrel not because it's reducing my water consumption--it's not in any meaningful way--but because it taught me something elementary about rain in the Northwest. There's a lot of it.
And there's a lot of it running off our roofs and driveways. Take, for example, my house, which is fairly "cozy." (That's realtor-ese for "small.") Roughly one-third of my roof--about 300 square feet--drains into the barrel.
Any guesses how many gallons of water come down from that one-third of my roof in a 1 inch rainfall?
