Using rainwater collected from your roof for the garden

[Kaleva]

8. All the calculations I've done show it isn't worth the cost.

Most gardening sites I've read say a garden needs about an inch of water per week. I am preparing 160 square feet for a garden next year. The village charges $16.00 for 1,000 gallons and that includes the sewer charge ($10 for water and $6 for sewer for 1000 gallons).

Using the calculator at the below site, my weekly water bill for watering the future garden will be $1.59 and that's assuming it didn't rain that week. Monthly, the max bill would be $6.36.

http://www.dannylipford.com/calculating-lawn-irrigation-costs/

After doing some measurements on the house, I went to the Ace hardware site to get a rough estimate as to the cost of putting in a rain gutter system on just one side of my house. With tax, the estimate came to about $145.00 and that's with doing the installation work myself.

Now, if my basement got wet every timed it rained, I could justify putting up rain gutters for that reason and collect the runoff in barrels to water my garden with as a side benefit. But it doesn't.

I'd come out further ahead right away and with a much smaller initial investment by changing my clothes washing and drying methods and by making my own laundry detergent and fabric softener.