Saving water!

I recently built a brew stand and what I do to conserve on water is recirculate chill water through a plate chiller while recirculating wort through it. Once the water gets hot, I dump into a bucket and eventually put it into a rain barrel and then on my garden. Saves me at least 20 gallons a week so I feel good about it, but not sure the trade off with electricity to run my pump justifies this or not. I do filter my cold water so it cuts down on how often I have to change the filter, so it might be worth it in the end. I just hate dumping water down the drain without using it for drinking or cleaning purposes...

I've been trying to find ways to save water as well, not exactly do to cost (water is cheap) but also for conservational reasons and my future development of an auto brew system.

Why couldn't you rescue an old radiator of some sort (car, junkyard...) Hook your copper wort chiller onto it with an inline pump. Maybe add a fan. This would give you a closed cooling system.

If you already had the wort chiller, I bet the most expensive component would be the pump. Sparkfun as a 350gph pump that I bet would work great. ($20 I think)

Again, perfect for an automatic brewing system.

I have two 250 gallon water tanks in my back yard that are plumbed to my down spouts. When I brew, I run a garden hose from my plate chiller out to these tanks. I have a lawn pump hooked up to my tank to water the lawn. I can also water the garden.