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Comment by kkylin | Hacker News Reader

I just heard from someone that rainwater collection is banned in parts of Colorado. Can someone with actual knowledge comment?

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It used to be illegal to do anything except direct the rainwater, e.g. direct a downspout into your flower garden. You are now allowed 2 55-gallon rain barrels.

The bummer is, even though you can now have rain barrels, it rains infrequently enough in Colorado that it's not terribly economical to buy 55-gallon rain barrels.

At $2.77 per 1,000 gallons from the utility, with infrequent rainfall it's pretty hard to ever recoup $176 for a 110 gallon system from BlueBarrelSystems. You're looking at 580 rains required to break even- while Denver, for example, sees only 40 days with "any measurable rainfall" a year.

That might be the cost of the water today, but history suggests that the price of water can fluctuate wildly. This is doubly true of the marginal cost beyond a certain baseline, which, again, fluctuates. Even without a drought or increase in regional population, you are vulnerable to (utility price, not CPI) inflation after ~5 years. The math for computing a break even period thus becomes squishy.

There are many people that place great value on being partially-off-the-grid, on (conspicuous) conservation, and enjoy DIY projects.

All good points, and certainly if you went entirely off-grid, avoiding a water tap fee is big savings. Though, 110 gallons isn't going to get you very far if you're totally off-grid.

It's basically because someone else might be using that water. So in the same way that if a creek is on your property in most states you probably aren't allowed to just siphon it all off to water your corn.

http://water.state.co.us/SurfaceWater/RainwaterCollection/Pa...

> 110 gallons of precipitation [...] can be collected and stored

With additional restrictions.

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