Early July 2008 - Our first tank

Rainwater catchment isn't necessarily cheap, especially when it comes to storing water in tanks. We started with a 900 gallon polyethylene tank purchased at a local plumbing supply store. We could have gotten a better deal on tanks, but with gas at $4/gallon at the time, it wasn't worth driving far to get one. We decided to put our first tank down the hillside a bit, below the point where we might put any buildings in the future. We're thinking that we'll direct roof-collected rainwater to this tank during storms. Then, during sunny days, we'll use a small solar electric pump and PV panel to gradually pump water back up hill from this tank to a larger tank at the highest point on the property. From that high tank, we can then use gravity again to supply most of our needs without pumping, although we still will probably need to pump water to our kitchen sink. We loaded the tank up on our little trailer, I dug a terraced pad out of the hillside, Jeanne rolled it down and set it in place (hey, I had to run the camera!), and we put a little water in it to keep it in place. We trucked the first bit of water in using a portable tank that we filled at a local public water supply.