The potential that exists

In terms of rainfall to be collected, the amounts, when calculated on a large scale, can be overwhelming.

For example, on my last trip, over a three day period, it rained .22 inches.  For every acre, which consists of 43,560 square feet, this computes out as follows:

43560 sq. ft * (.22/12) ft = 798.6 cubic feet.  Since there are 7.48 gallons per cubic foot, then the amount of rainfall when collected together in one spot would be 5974 gallons.  That's enough for one person to have 16 gallons every day for an entire year.

Clearly, there is no need to use an entire acre for capturing rainfall.  Since it rains about 12 inches per year out there, that one spell of rain (.22 inches) would be about 22/ 1200 hundredths of an inch or not quite 2% of an entire years rainfall.  Putting it another way, in order to get the same result over the year's time, we could use just 1/50 th of the area.   It says here that only 799 square feet would do it!  Let's run the numbers and see if that's right.  Since 12 inches equals a foot and 799 is almost 800, lets say that we get 800 cubic feet of water.  Yup, it checks out.

Naturally, the rain doesn't fall evenly throughout the year.  You may get most of the rain in a short period of time.  The rest of the year may be bone dry.  In such a case as that, would it be better to prepare for a lot of rain, even if the odds are that on any one day that you won't get it?

But it seems crazy to get water storage that is capable of collected several thousand gallons at a time, but in a place where it rains so little most of the time.  You can look for something about like that, and it would cost a bundle to buy it and set it up.

What the heck, lets put this in the water subseries of the off-the-grid posts.

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