I live in Australia and we're going through a nasty drought right now. The government has us on water restrictions similar to rationing. Scary?

It's law now that all new houses built in our state must have a rain water collection tank plumbed to run the toilet cystern. It didn't cost that much and it's a great idea.

I personally have two rain water collection tanks at my home - one to run the toilet and the other to water the gardens, wash the car, fill up the bucket when cleaning floors, wash the dog, wash the windows...

Who says you can't use rainwater?

Raven

I was talking to my neighbor about the rainwater collection idea last night and she said she has a "grey water" tank attached to her house. This is water she collects from the shower or laundry drains.

She can only re-use that water for gardens or for washing the car - but we all have fairly large front and back yards that need something and we just don't get any rain so that's a nifty idea.

I'll have to look into this.

We have various buckets around the house, which I purposely use to put outside to collect rainwater. I use it to water a lot of plants I have in the garden greenhouse.