Early in the project I took the advice of the energy consultant to drop the idea of rain harvesting. (1) it isn’t raining as much anymore (2) the ROI is fairly poor (3) grey water would provide more. So I dropped it.

Months later, the design of the house is a little more formed and the fact that all down spouts are scheduled to dump to the front, the harvest idea returned. The idea shifted from an underground tank in the back at max annual capacity to a smaller underground tank in the front. I created a simulator worksheet that took daily (historical) rain fall (contribution) amounts and estimated daily needs (withdrawal) and how these change the volume of water stored in a tank of a set size. From this I found a much smaller tank (by a factor of 3) would satisfy my interests. I was getting excited again about this idea of free water from the sky. 

I learned a neighbor down the street had installed a system on his property and I had to spend an hour picking his brain on the subject. I was hooked, I was drawing out the placement, verifying the engineering, followed by calculating the investment… and here I had to admit, the ROI isn’t that great. It is hard to calculate the cost over time, unlike my mortgage which is a fixed interest, the fees for water (and sewage) are not fixed and the only thing for certain is they will go up (by how much and when?). Based on current numbers, I estimated it would take 35 years of usage from the cistern (and not from city provided water) to cover the cost of the cistern install. I realize first hand what I heard elsewhere, water is very cheap. Not to mention, the tank, the pump, etc will require maintenance and part replacement over that 35 years, so unless the market for city water changes drastically, I would never recoup the investment.
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So there is no financial gain from doing this cistern. All there is would be the cool factor that I’m collecting rain water. There isn’t enough to argue with Amy that we should do this. I’m a bit of the “chicken little” when it comes to the future of water here, so I remain interested in harvesting rain (not 50 gallon drums sitting under your down spout, but 4 digits of gallon storage under grade). Yet, I can’t point to good supportive arguments other than speculation. So I surrender once again (now for the third time) the agenda to install an underground cistern.

The stressful point was I would want to dig the hole now, before foundation is in place so that heavy equipment can get into place and easily move the soil off the property. If we decide to do this later, there will be additional challenges (and thus added costs) to install the tank. My one exception that I have is that we may have a problem with moving the downspout water and managing the water. We may end up with a front yard moat every time there is a good rain (I speculate we will have less rainy days, but when it does rain, it rains hard). This may threaten the foundation over time. If I do find water problems after rains, I will have to re-look at this issue.