High Country Desert, water and wildfire

Water is life, especially in the Arid American West.

In 2009 it became legal to harvest rainwater off my roof in Colorado.

As soon as I could I bought a really big tank and put it in the ground to collect rainwater off my nice big metal studio roof. I also had irrigation lines run from the studio to my house. The primary reason for this is fire mitigation. 

 

Here's a picture of that 12,000 gallon beauty going in. Why 12,000 gallons? I asked our local fire chief (Ron Leach) how big a tank he needed to fight a fire. I knew the fire trucks held 2,000 gallons and thought it would be close to that. His answer surprised me. He suggested 10,000 so that the fire truck hoses could safely pull water out of the tank. I compared prices between 10,000 and 12,000 and the difference was pretty small given the price of the tank. Once I sized up to 15,000 it would have required a bigger truck and the shipping charges sky-rocketed. 

According to local rain fall reports (15" per year)  I should be able to harvest 24,000 to 32,000 gallons per year off my 2600 square foot studio roof. Now, those figures are from local towns which are in low lying valleys. I just don't get the same rainfall as they do. In fact in 2012 I got a little over 6" but 2012 was an exceptionally dry year. I'm thinking the prediction for drier years instead of wetter is probably closer to the mark and NASA seems to agree. 

NASA rainfall predictions

The tank was installed in October of 2011. I watched closely all last year as the tank began to fill. After our "monsoonal" rains (typically mid July to mid August) the tank was close to full. It had topped off by September. I wanted to take full advantage of winter snow melt so I watered the area around my house during the month of September.

I'd left 6000 gallons in the tank before turning off the pump and blowing out the irrigation pipes for winter. That's the minimum I would need to water around the house for 2 hours (again, in case of fire). I figured I should leave that in just in case the snow harvest was bad and I was facing the long hot dry days of June without water.

Things weren't looking good for the snow harvest. By March I'd only put another 1000 gallons in the tank. Then came April. The month of April put 5000 gallons in the tank. I was doing a happy dance. In fact subsequent rains meant I was running my irrigation around the house 3x a week just to keep the tank from overflowing. 

Now we're back in typical June weather. The last big rain was May 6th (630 gallons) and since then maybe 30 gallons more with roof condensation. I watered around the house a bit the first weeks of June but now I'm keeping the 9800 gallons in there in case of fire. It's definitely fire season in Colorado. 

Colorado Wildfires