Rain water: If you get enough rain, it doesn't matter if it comes all
in 5 months --- except that the more concentrated the collecting, the
more storage you'll need. Read about a study for a lady in Texas,
similar rainfall pattern: plan wasn't feasible as she needed too much
storage.

From my experience, rain water collects MUCH faster than one would
guess. I put a 55 barrel under a downspout (1 of 2 downspouts
collecting from ~ 250 sqft of roof). I wasn't expecting to collect
water too fast: late afternoon downpour and I could actually see the
water level rising in the (opague white plastic) barrel. Seven minutes
later, 55 gallons and overflowing. I was out in the rain re-directing
the gutter back to the sewer pipe. Figure that was 0.02 inches per
minute (I'm guessing 2/3 of the water went into the downspout I
collected from) but that comes to 1.25 inches of rain per hour.

If you do decide to go the rain water route, let us know: there's a
bunch of stuff you need to check out.

Good luck.
Bill



"Chuck Yerkes" wrote in message
news:25Swc.16245$Sw.12946@attbi_s51...
Larry Caldwell wrote:
In article ,
(F. Stephans) says...
So what I need from the kind readers of these newsgroups is
1) an opinion on whether you think it'll work and any suggestions
you
might have on how to make it work better.

It will work fine. That's very similar to the system I have
installed.
I use a 2500 gallon tank, but that's about the only difference.
You
could also flow restrict your well to a lower rate to avoid any
possibility that it will run dry. At 2.5 gpm, the well will pump
1100
gallons in 7.33 hours.

What does a 2500 gallon tank cost? Is it buried? It's plastic of
some kind I assume.

(pondering rain water capture, but it could be just stupid in
california where it rains 4-5 months, then doesn't at all until
the next Nov.).