Rain-X
. .

(just kidding)

Everyone's a comedian...

Big squeegees with long handles?

et tu? Actually, not a bad idea...

If you can increase the pitch of the roof, you might get some run-off, esp since you live near the coast.

And it isn't like you NEVER get rain... one inch of rain on a 1000 sq ft house equals 83 CUBIC FEET of water, or 3 cubic yards of the stuff, if I've done my math right.

1 gallon of water = about 200 cu. inches, so 1 cu. ft. of water should equal about 8 2/3 gallons.

So, that 83 cubic feet of water from the 1000 sq ft roof would come to almost 718 gallons of water from one inch of rain. Visualize 24 of your 30 gallon garbage cans full of it, or 13 55-gal drums. That would water a few veggies & flowers, wouldn't it?

Rainwater is probably one of America's most under-used resources. And it's free!

Sue

Look up the term "Mist net" at google.com to see how the professionals harvest fog.

Thank you for the two helpful posts.

Belgianpup, storing all of the winter rainfall runoff is impractical so I was looking for some way to obtain water during the months when we get no rain but have the greatest irrigation needs, but thanks for the suggestion on increasing the pitch of the roof.

Thank you for the website lazygardens, I'll be sure to check it out.

The suggestion by Sue to increase the pitch is right on. We built an "A" frame house with a 60 degree pitch near a shed with a 15 degree pitch and the house caught twice as much water as the shed. This was in an area with a 36 inch annual rainfall. Peter

On the islands of Bermuda, each home, commercial establishment, and business is responsible for its own water supply. And that means catching water from the air, from rainfall or otherwise. Hence, every house has a roof cleverly designed to trap every bit of moisture and divert it into a cistern for use later. Surely, somewhere out there on the world wide web, you can find out the design secrets for those roofs.