Conejo Post

I was talking about the benefits of having rain barrels in a previous post, and this is Eco-nerd’s response:

“The barrels are too costly at any price. Consider that you are paying middle tier triunfo rates at $4.28 per HFC. If you fill up that barrel once a month (and we know that will never happen in SoCal) your savings will be less than one HFC at $4.28 for the entire year.

So, how much did you pay for that barrel and will it last long enough to pay for itself? Probably not. How much fossil fuel in production and transportation went into this big plastic pail so you could save a couple of bucks over a year to water your potted plants?

Were you considering watering your landscape with the barrel water? The average suburban landscape uses 140,000 gallons of water a year so you would need close to 2500 barells to capture the water that you use on your landscape in a year. That’s a lot of plastic.

A better idea is to dial back your sprinkler system. The typical landscape uses 2 to 3 times more water than is required. Dial back that system and save 1000′s of times more water than the barell without any initial investment.  The days are shorter so your plants will be using less water now (photosynthesis only occurs during daylight hours). So it’s a great time to space out the days that you water.”