Gutters on buildings and huts?

[Ninjacatipllar]

Hello all i'm new here! I would like to state that i don't currently have any land so all my questions will be theoretical, i'm hoping to be able to buy 40 to 65 acres in the next 5 years, assuming any land is left around by then! haha but i regress.

I'm in Washington and it rains......a lot......all the time really, so i was wondering if the water you'd get from installing gutters on all your animal building would be worth the expense? Has any one tried this or thought of this? I know people will hook up barrels to their houses, but i'm not sure if small buildings would produce enough run off to warrant the cost?

So let me know your thoughts!

 

[Southern by choice]

Absolutely! We have lots of buildings and we also have extremely high iron in the water which isn't great for the goats... we try to collect as much as we can. We are still putting up more gutters on the buildings. It also helps with erosion. We have erosion issues from areas where the roof has no gutter and it runs down off onto a slight slope... add goats chickens ducks etc and LGD's and it ends up mud and wet all the time... we now have new streams running through just from a horribly wet late fall 2012 through all of 2013... wettest I can remember it in NC.

I one rainstorm we can easily fill 3 stock tanks.

 

[Womwotai]

Oh goodness yes. I have a gable-roofed chicken coop that is 10x14 and I put up gutters on just one side of it and a rain barrel to catch the water. We don't get a ton of rain here but last year I only had to fill it with a hose twice - there rest of the time I was able to use the caught rain water to water my flock of over 100 birds. The cost was not very high - $40 for the rain barrel and about $10 worth of gutter and attachments. To me the cost was well worth having to haul water.

 

[Ninjacatipllar]

Oh goody! so glad to see i'm not nuts!

 

[Southern by choice]

Oh goody! so glad to see i'm not nuts!

Ooops I thought being a little nuts was a requirement for BYH!

Just kidding.

Welcome to BYH!
Lots of great people and info here.
What kind of livestock do you hope to raise?

 

[Ninjacatipllar]

I'm hoping to raise enough chickens to feed my husband and me, plus a few layers, some turkeys during the holiday season, 2 milk cows, one to raise the calves and one to milk, then use to calves for our freezer and to sell, possibly a few sheep for wool for hand spinning and lambs, maybe meat goats, and i would like 3 sows and a boar for freezer and selling of shoats, and possibly rabbits, not sure about them yet though, oh and a few horses, possibly a few boarders. Big plans!

 

[Womwotai]

If I may make a suggestion….take it slow and only do one new thing a year. That advice was given to me when we moved to our acreage and I've appreciated it many times. It takes time to really learn the needs and care of any new animal (not to mention the time it takes to build their accommodation, fence out the area they will be kept etc.) If you try to create an instant farm by adding all of those animals in the first year, the odds that some of them will be a failure - or that you will burn out quickly - are high. I already kept chickens at our old house in the city, so the year we moved here, I expanded the poultry flock by adding turkeys and ducks. A little learning curve but not too much after keeping chickens most of my life already. Since we were still unpacking and cleaning the old house and dealing with its sale, I couldn't have handled the much larger learning curve of a brand new animal. The second year we added sheep and goats and I am still learning about them. This year we are going to start our orchard - which won't be as time-consuming an endeavor as a new animal, but nevertheless will take time to research and dig holes and plant and keep them watered through the summer etc. Take it slow, and you will have time to really learn and enjoy each new thing, and the odds that you will still be on your property 20 years from now are high.

 

[Bossroo]

Before you spend $s on the rainwater project. Since we have smog as well as acid rain, and each area of the country is different. I would recommend that you get a sample of the roof runoff from the first drops of rain that fall on your subject roof so that you can send it to a lab for testing to see what is actually in the run off. Also, get a storage tank that is completely covered or it will become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

 

[greybeard]

Just for a reference as to how many gallons of water might run off your roof in a good rain or even how much irrigation it would take to equal a good rainfall (1" of rainfall)

A 40' x 70' roof will shed approx 1,743 gallons of water from a 1" rain.
A 10' X 17" roof will shed approx 436 gallons of water from a 1" rain.

The water falling on 1 acre of land in a 1" rainfall is 27,154 gallons.
The water falling on 1 sq mile of land in a 1" rainfall is 17.38 million gallons.

You can use this calculator to find out how much to expect to see shed from your roof:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/sc2.html

 

[Womwotai]

That is awesome! Next time it rains, I'm going to that calculator to figure up how much I was able to "collect" from the roof.

@Bossroo makes a point I had not considered regarding acid rain. However, having fed them the collected rain water for a year now with no apparent ill effects, I'm not going to worry too much about it in my location. Also, they were drinking the run off from the roof (where it collected in puddles below) before I added the gutters, so I figure collecting the run off makes sense as it means less mud around the coop, in addition to providing drinking water.

Still, it doesn't hurt to test the water where you are….