I can't see you collecting any water that way. When it rains it isn't normally that much water, maybe an inch or less and that would be all that is in your tub. If you don't use the water right away it would all just evaporate before you could use it. The reason rain barrels work is because you are collecting far more water than you would if it was just an open container. Lets say it rains an inch, your tripod container would only collect about an inch of water. A rain barrel (of the same diameter) in the same situation would collect several feet of water because it has a much larger surface area over which it is collecting. Plus water is heavy you would need a really strong tripod to support you washtub.

A friend of mine set up something like this in her garden, hooking it up to the rain spout on her house. It is working well for her.

We had such a monster rain yesterday, it looked like a car wash outside. I had left a LARGE (@1/2 bushel) rubber bucket outside, and it was half full of water by the time the storm was over. I don't know what that translates to in inches of rain.

I do use raincatchers in my garden (soda bottles I have cut the bottoms off, and stuck the tops in the soil). Needless to say, yesterday they were all full :D

We are collecting rainwater off the house roof. Weirdtrev (isn't that a great name!) is right. There needs to be a large surface (roof) collecting water and channeling it (guttering and downspout) into a container. I'd suggest that you get a large container with a lid, put it on a level surface (we used paving blocks) with the downspout going into it, and install a small hand pump (we got ours for about $10 at Harbor Freight). Putting a water tub up on a tripod is asking for disaster!

rainbarrel. Sits house. With

Mosquitoes .

Too much evaporation. Way to much, will not work.

My rainbarrel the house. . mosquitoes .

More to the point, it will just evaporate, AND there will be no mosquitoes. If you get one inch of rain, you get one inch of water in the uncovered washtub. The standard uncovered pool number is 1/2 inch of water evaporation per day in the summer. So after two days in an uncovered washtub, your one inch of rain is gone. Dead mosquitoes.

If you want to collect rainwater, you collect it as runoff from a roof into a covered container. Whereby, no evaporation, and no mosquitoes.

If it rains a lot EVERY DAY, you might have a chance of collecting a usable amount, but then why would you be worried about watering the garden?

Why in the world are we talking about a 15 year old post???

If you are getting skeeters. You can cap your rainbarrel when it's not collecting. Keeps the tank full and skeeters out so they can't breed in your barrel. Also, a wee drop of dish soap can help- it breaks the surface tension of the water so the skeeters can't land on it. This has to be repeated on the regular.

Water tower watering isn't odd, it's just gravity. A lot of water collectors have their tanks up on something, spigot and use gravity to drain the tank. Water tower is just putting the tank up higher than usual.