THE HOMESTEAD CISTERN

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Whether your well has just gone dry and you need a new (and preferably low-cost) source of water . . . or that sprig you've been drawing from doesn't always produce as much as you (or your animals) would like . . . or you've grown tired of the taste of city water . . . you'll want to see what Penny and Lou Kujawinski (authors of the following article) have to say about collecting and storing rainwater for homestead use.

Have you ever looked at a pretty piece of land but hesitated to buy the property because it lacked water? (Quite often, an otherwise-attractive parcel of land that has no well, pond, stream, or spring will be priced so low that you may be tempted to buy the tract anyway.) Lack of ground water is a common problem . . . one that the folks in our part of Missouri—early settlers and present-day farmers alike—have learned to get around by the use of something known as a rainwater cistern .

A rainwater cistern is—as the name implies—simply a setup for collecting rainwater (usually the precipitation that falls on your home's or barn's roof) and storing it until it's needed in a (usually underground) concrete or masonry tank. Cisterns are ideal for farms and homesteads situated on waterless land, or for areas where the natural ground water is too hard—contains too many dissolved minerals—to drink, use for washing hair, etc. (Fact is, some of the people hereabouts who have good springs on their property have gone ahead and installed cisterns anyway, just because they prefer the taste of rainwater.)

We didn't feel out of place, then—upon moving to our present home—when we designed and constructed a simple rainwater-collection system large enough to supply all our needs for water. And—despite the limitations inherent in such a system—we've never regretted having gone this route. (It sure beats spending upwards of $1,000 to drill a well for water that may or may not be there!) Quite possibly, a cistern could be the answer to your water-supply problems, too.

HOW TO KNOW WHETHER A CISTERN IS "RIGHT" FOR YOU

Cisterns won't work for everybody. In fact, for such a setup to be at all useful, the following conditions must apply:

[1] You must live in an area that gets plenty of rain. As a general rule, you can figure that if crops can be grown without irrigation where you live, there'll probably be enough precipitation to meet your water needs. (In times of drought, you can do what we do: Have water hauled in, at a cost of about $10 per 1,000 gallons.)