A plastic 20 gallon garbage can is my backup rain barrel and I use a few 5 gallon buckets under my back patio roof's drip line for my primary source.

Thanks, that's a good idea. I didn't have space for a 55-gallon, even one that is not a rain barrel, but I think a 10-20 gallon would be OK and still allow me to have more than just 5 gallons in some water jugs.

I purchased two, 55 gallon plastic pickle barrels years ago. It only took a few years for the 'aroma' of imported Greek peperoncini to disappear.... ;-)

Five gallon "mud buckets" are ubiquitous. If you don't have room for something as large as a pickle barrel, you could buy a large, plastic primary fermentation bucket from a home brew or wine-making store. Sure, it'll be more costly than the $5 each I paid for the barrels, but pro'lly less than $20. You may be able to source something cheaper from a deli or other food service place.

And yeah, you need to have a filter or screen to keep it free of mosquito larvae. The pickle barrels had a two-part closure much like that on a canning jar: a screw-on ring and a flat lid. I drilled a few 2" holes in the lid with a hole saw, and a scrap of fiberglass window screen is held in place by the ring. This set-up catches most of the debris from the downspout. Less than a third of an inch will fill both barrels. The main reason for the barrels was for back-up water for the fish pond; water for the CPs is secondary.

Cheers

I have a rain saver bog garden that my DH bought me for my birthday. This was last month when I put it together. So far, I have a gallon of rain water.

I bought a large flexible tub and place it under the runoff from my roof on my back porch when it rains. But only on days when it's been raining heavily, and been raining for quite a while. This gives it plenty of time to "flush" away any debris/particulates/contaminants from the air and from my roof. Fortunately, living in Tornado Alley during tornado season, we get a lot of heavy thunderstorms rolling thru, dumping plenty of fresh rain. When that tub fills up, I'll bottle up as much as possible into these one gallon bottles and store them in crates in my garage. Then I just grab a bottle of it whenever needed. This keeps the water as fresh as the day I bottled it.

A couple of weeks ago, it rained so much that I had bottled up quite a bit of rainwater. I actually ran of of bottles to fill up. But then it kept raining, and raining, and raining, that I decided to dump out the water that I just bottled and then filled them all back up again with even cleaner rainwater. I felt horrible pouring out all of that water, knowing that California would give anything for some rain. And here I was, just spilling it out.

I'm now in the process of saving more one gallon bottles and crates, so I can store even more the next time some heavy thunderstorms roll thru this area. Even tho I probably already have more than enough. But I have plenty of space left in my garage, so why not put it to good use?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I have the Weatherbug app on my phone and I use it to monitor the forecast. And on the days that it does rain, I use it to monitor the radar to know when and where the most rain is at, so I can put my plastic tub outside before the heaviest rain hits us. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's not. It only takes a little planning in advance. Totally worth it, for having plenty of fresh bottled rainwater whenever I need it. :)