Who's got a brilliant idea for rain water collection?

[Hwk-I-St8]

I'm growing hops with my BIL on his family's farm. He wanted them in some remote corner of a field with no water access, so I've been racking my brains on a viable system to keep them watered. So far I've been filling 5G buckets, hauling them out on a 4 wheeler and hand watering.

I'd really like to do some sort of rainwater collection system, but there's no building or anything to collect runoff from. Almost all the googling I've done shows rain barrels, not a mechanism for increasing the amount collected.

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for a relatively inexpensive way to collect rain water when there's no building nearby?

 

[bucketnative]

How about building a collection table? Basically a table with side rails that is sloped towards one corner, where you have a downspout to drain the table into a bucket/barrel. The key is getting a large surface area:

Let’s say you use a 48” x 96” piece of plywood for the table. We will assume perfect collection. For every 1" of rain, you would collect 19.5 gal water.

 

[6Tap]

Carport with Corrigated roof >> gutter>> Downspout into “new/ clean” 32 gallon trash cans with valves at the bottom.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

How about building a collection table? Basically a table with side rails that is sloped towards one corner, where you have a downspout to drain the table into a bucket/barrel. The key is getting a large surface area:

Let’s say you use a 48” x 96” piece of plywood for the table. We will assume perfect collection. For every 1" of rain, you would collect 19.5 gal water.

Something like this was what I was thinking...just not sure how to build it. I didn't think about something flat with side rails mounted on a slant. I was thinking something more funnel shaped. You're idea would be easier to implement and not too expensive.

 

[kh54s10]

Any buildings up hill of the planting area? If so, collect from gutters and downspouts into barrel(s), run downhill with hose.

Otherwise a collection as described previously or a tarp or something tied tight on one side and make a v on the other side. Collect from the v end.

 

[bleme]

I have a tarp I put up to shade/shelter my chickens that accidentally does an incredible job of rainwater collection as well.

I don't know what kind of ground you are working with, but Cody'sLab on Youtube has several videos about the watershed he built.

 

[mongoose33]

How about a blue tarp? Make it V-shaped and tilt it toward the bucket.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Basically, the two suggestions above equate to a VERY LARGE funnel.

You could also use a large table umbrella upside down.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

A typical rain is 1/4" per hour per square foot. So a hour's worth of rain on a 4x8 plot is ~5g of water. From there you can figure out how much water you want to collect, how much you want to spend, and how big of an area you want to block off.

Also, consider an irrigation pump of some kind. Water is heavy, and especially heavy after the fifth or tenth bucket.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Check with your local agricultural extension agent. They have pubs on all sorts of topics. You don't have to be a professional farmer to access them. They will also know what others are doing in your area.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]