What Can You Use Rainwater For?

When rain moves into the Jackson, WY area, it provides natural irrigation for plants throughout the whole region. Unfortunately, the rain doesn’t care much about our preferred watering schedules, so it rolls through whenever it feels like it – and often with a lot of it falling all at once. 

As a responsible gardener, consider capturing some of it for use later. There are plenty of great ways to put rainwater to use for your needs, and we’d like to point out what you can use rainwater for below. To discuss landscaping projects for your property, give us a call at TLC today. 

How Rainwater Can Be Collected

You could just set a bucket out in your yard and wait for the clouds to roll in, but that won’t be a very efficient or effective system. Fortunately, plenty of well-designed systems are available on the market for just this purpose. 

You want to have as much space as possible covered when trying to collect water, and your existing roof is the perfect opportunity to capture much of what falls on your property. As an added bonus, the roof already has a gutter and downspout system to manage the flow of water, so all you’ll need to do is add a collection point and you’re ready to go. 

A rain barrel is a basic collection option and is easy to connect to the gutters that serve the building. Potted plants around this barrel can make it attractive and a purposeful part of your landscape design. But the collection capacity here is limited, so if you plan to collect and store a large volume of water, an underground storage tank may be a preferred alternative. Of course, the cost of burying a large tank will be far greater than just adding some barrels near the house, so you’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of each option.

What Can You Use Rainwater For? | Top 6 Ways

Once you collect beautiful, fresh Jackson rainwater, you’ll want some plans in mind for how you’ll put that water to use. Your needs will be specific to your property, but the list below touches on some of the popular options for collected rainwater –

Irrigation

This is likely the first use you think of when considering collecting rainwater, and it’s a useful application to be sure. You can collect as much water as possible during the wetter parts of the year and then use it gradually when the skies are blue and the temperatures are high. Even if you aren’t able to meet all of your irrigation needs with a water collection system, you can at least cut down on how much you rely on the public water supply. Not only will this save you money, but it helps the environment too. 

Water Feature

There are few things that will bring a landscape design to life quite like a water feature. Whether it is a big pond or a small stream – or something in between – you can use your rainwater system to feed the water feature and keep it looking great throughout the year. 

Cleaning Equipment

If you use your property for any kind of farming work, you probably have equipment that needs to be cleaned to keep it in good condition. Utilizing your rainwater supply for washing important gear is another useful application to keep in mind. 

Livestock

Another use for a farm property is to use rainwater to provide the livestock on your land with the water they need to drink. As long as the water you collect is in good condition, this supply can be helpful to meet the needs of animals, who may require quite a bit of water each day to stay healthy. 

Composting

The proper decomposition of your compost pile depends on water. A compost pile should be watered along with the rest of your garden. Compost tea can also be made with collected rainwater.

Bathing and Laundry

About 22% of the water used indoors in the US is used for washing clothes. Baths take 2% of the total, and showers take 17%. Your municipal water use might be cut by more than 40% if you used rainwater collected from the roof for all these purposes. You can use either treated or untreated rainwater, depending on how clean you want your washing water to be.

Responsible Gardening

Using rainwater for functional purposes is a great way to take advantage of what Mother Nature brings our way here in Jackson. At TLC, we love helping our clients highlight the natural beauty of this area, in a way that keeps the wildlife and environment thriving. We’d be honored to have the opportunity to work on your property. Take a moment to reach out today and learn more about our maintenance services. Thanks for stopping by!