Of the many uses our ancestors have had for rain collection barrels in the past, Man has created a situation that requires a completely new purpose for a rain barrel. In Nature there is a natural patern called the water cycle. The water evaporates from large bodies of water such as the Oceans and makes clouds which then might pass over land and when the right set of circumstances occur the clouds release the water as rain which falls and is absorbed by the Earth and gets purified as it passes through the ground. It ends up in lakes ponds and streams and finds its way back to the ocean or some large lake and the cycle begins again. The fine points are being left out, because the point I’m making is that the part about water seeping through the ground is being skipped in our urban environments, leading to increased pollution.

By using a rainwater barrel, we can greatly reduce the amount of pollution caused by storm runoff. You see things like roof tops roads and parking lots keep the water from being absorbed by the earth and being purified and raising our water table. The storm runoff roars down our streets and alleys collecting pollutants as it goes, carrying them to our lakes and streams via storm drains. The consequences of this are polluted beaches, polluted lakes and streams, and the reduction in Earth’s drinkable water. Now this whole cycle could have been improved if Southern Californians used rain collection barrels and kept the water out of the streets and storm drains then when they watered their lawn the water would be absorbed by the earth and purified as is the natural cycle.

Any one who believes that it never rains in Southern California never had to wade through a 6 inches of rushing water at the streets edge to get to their car on one of those not so sunny California days. While it is true that it seldom rains in Southern California, during the rainy season it often pours. many feel it doesn’t rain enough in Southern California to warrant the use of a rain collection barrel. In a place like California, you need more than one water barrel, because 5,000 to 30,000 gallons of rainfall can be collected from 1000 sq ft of roof each year and 90% of it during a three-month period and you’d be trying to make it through the other nine months on the 50 gallons from your one rain collection barrel. A set of interconnected rain collection barrels will multiply your water storage to the point where you might have water available year-round. Because of their building block shape, the Rainwater hog has a big advantage over the traditional round Rainwater collection barrel, because they can be connected in series in and much more complex fashion, allowing you to string 10 or 20 together in a still somewhat aesthetic fashion. You can calculate the amount of water that runs off your roof by the following formila .623 x your roofs sq ft x the inches of rain per year. So if your roof was 1000 sq ft and you lived in LA which gets between 10 and 30 inches per year. You could expect between 6230 gallons to 18,690 gallons to be running off your roof each year. Now you probably won’t find a rainwater barrel that big unless you collect it in your swimming pool but I think that the argument that it doesn’t rain enough in California is a flimsey argument you just have to get Texas sized rain barrels.