I finally looked up how much water my rain barrel really holds

I've had this 55 gallon rain barrel under my downspout for about 2 years now. Never really thought about it much until last week when I was trying to figure out why my tomatoes were still drying out during a dry spell. So I grabbed a 5 gallon bucket and started counting how many trips it would take to fill it up from the barrel. Turned out the barrel only had about 30 gallons in it even after a good storm. I did some digging online and found out that a 1 inch rain on a 1,000 square foot roof gives you around 600 gallons of runoff. That blew my mind. My little backyard setup is barely catching a fraction of what's possible. Anyone else ever do the math on their rain collection and realize they're way undersized?

3 comments

3 Comments

hollyc9217d ago

lol its wild how we just assume things are working way better than they actually are, right? The whole rain barrel thing reminds me of how people overestimate their recycling efforts too. You think you're doing great but then you actually measure it and realize you're barely making a dent. I bet most of us are like that with a bunch of stuff honestly. We just go with the vibe instead of checking the numbers lol

jenniferw8217d ago

You ever notice how we do that with health stuff too? Like I'll think I'm eating pretty clean all week, then I actually track what I eat for a few days and realize I had like three cookies and a bag of chips and somehow convinced myself that was fine because I had a salad for lunch. It's the same with the recycling thing - you picture yourself as this eco-friendly person but the actual data might tell a totally different story. I guess we're just good at believing the version of ourselves we want to exist, not the one that's actually showing up day to day.

the_tara17d ago

People do the same thing with their budgets - swear they're saving money but never actually check where it's going. It's like we're all just running on gut feelings and hoping they're right.