Spent $250 on a rain barrel setup for my garden in Portland and it paid for itself in 3 months during last summer's drought.

I figured it would take a year or two to break even but with water prices going up and the city restrictions on outdoor use, that barrel saved my tomato plants and my water bill way faster than I thought - anyone else seen a bigger return than expected from a simple setup like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

felixward21h ago

My buddy Mike in Seattle put together a similar rain barrel setup last spring and he went all out with two 50-gallon drums he got off Craigslist for $40 total. He rigged them up to his downspout with some PVC pipe he had lying around and by July that system was his garden's only water source during the heatwave. He saved so much on his bill that he figured the whole thing paid itself off in like 2 months, plus his neighbors were borrowing water from him to keep their lawns alive. The crazy part is he actually got a small rebate from the city too because they had a program for rainwater harvesting that he didn't even know about.

the_vera21h ago

Had a buddy in Portland who built a similar setup with old food-grade buckets and his tomato plants loved it, @felixward.